PS 



AMONG THE HILLS 



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l^aiBRARY OF Congress 






Chap.. 



S^^UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.^ 




OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
In 1844. 



THE POET 
AMONG THE HILLS 



Oliver Wendell Holmes 

IN BERKSHIRE. 

His Berkshire Poems, some of them now first published, with 

Historic and Descriptive hicidents Concerning the 

Poems, the Poet, and his Literary Neighbors. 

His Poetic, Personal and Ancestral Relations to the County. 



Jf' E: A. SMITH. 



The memory of great men is the noblest inheritance of their country.' 



PITTSFIELD, MASS.: 
GEORGE BLATCHFORD 

1895. 



|(iM 



60800 

Copyright, 1895, by 
J. E. A. SMITH. 



"Whatever strengthens our local attachments is favor- 
able both to individual and to national character. Our 
home, our birthplace, our native land, — think for a 
while what the virtues are which arise out of the feelings 
connected with these words. . . . Show me a man who 
cares no more for one place than another, and I will 
show you in that same person one who loves nothing 
but himself. Beware of those who are homeless by 
choice : you have no hold on a human being whose affec- 
tions are without a tap-root."— Southey : The Doctor. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Prologue. — Why and Because— Dr. Holmes' Berk- 
shire Poetry Characterized — Fable of a Socialist 
Community — What Pittsfield is Proud of — Berk- 
shire Scenery — A Haunt for Literary Lions — 
Melville and Hawthorne — Longfellow, the Old 
Clock on the Stairs, Roaring Brook and Kava- 
nagh, Charles Sumner and Fanny Kemble — Dr. 
Holmes and the Newspaper Press, . . 7 

L Berkshire Jubilee Speech and Poem. — Sketch 
of the Jubilee — The Dinner — David Dudley 
Field's Journey of a Day — Catherine Sedg- 
wick's Chronicles — Dr. Holmes' Speech from a 
Table— His Poem of Welcome, . . .49 

n. The Wendell Family. — Jacob Wendell's De- 
scent — Jacob Wendell in Boston — Connection 
with Old Boston Families — His Descendants — 
Holmes Genealogy — Phillips Genealogy — 
Wendell Phillips— Oliver Wendell in Pittsfield 
— Curious Incidents — Oliver Wendell Fierce for 
Moderation ; Friendship for Henry and Peter 
Van Schaack, . . . . . . 69 

HL Dr. Holmes' Summer Villa, and Life in It. 
—The Villa— Letters to a Pittsfield Lady and 
Her Reminiscences — Letter to a School-Teacher 
—Blackberries and Other Berries — The Canoe 
Meadows— The Holmes Pine, ... 87 

IV. A Vision of the Housatonic River. — Dr. 
Holmes' Love for the River — Remembered by 
the Classic Cam in England — River Loved by 
Many Men and Women of Letters — The Vision, 98 



6 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

V. Young Ladies' Institute Poem.— Character of 

the Institute — John Quincy Adams Visits It — 
Graduating Exercises in 1849 — Speech by Ex- 
President John Tyler — Dr. Holmes' Speech and 
Poem, 106 

VI. The Ploughman. — Genesis of the Berkshire 
Agricultural Society — Elkanah Watson — Major 
Thomas Melville — John Quincy Adams on Agri- 
cultural Oratory — The Picturesque First Cattle 
Show — How Women Used to Receive Their 
Premiums — About Ploughing Matches — Cattle 
Shows of 1849 an<i 1 85 1 — Dr. Holmes' Report 
on Ploughing Match — His Poem, "The Plough- 
man," 114 

VII. The Pittsfiei.d Cemetery Dedication Poem. 
— Description of Cemetery Grounds — Previous 
Burial Grounds — Dedication Exercises — Quota- 
tion from Rev. Dr. Neill's Address — Dr. 
Holmes and Wendell Phillips— Dedication 
Poem, 135 

VIII. The New Eden.— How the Poem Was Writ- 
ten, 145 

IX. Poems for Ladies* Fair. — St. Stephen's Church 
Fair — A Lady's Raid on Dr. Holmes' Poetical 
Preserves— Camilla — Portia's Leaden Casket — 
What a Dollar Will Buy, .... 151 

X. L'Envoi. — The Mountains and the Sea — Presen- 
tation from Dr. Holmes' Library to Berkshire 
Athenaeum — Hawthorne's Desk — Pittsfield 
Characters in Dr. Holmes' Novels— Good-By, 
Old Folks! 159 

XI. Appendix.— Longfellow's Poem, "The Old 
Clock on the Stairs;" Fanny Kemble's Ode for 
the Berkshire Jubilee. "A Berkshire Summer 
Morning— A Quaint Old Cattle-Show Program, 169 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 



PROLOGUE. 

Why and Because — Dr. Holmes' Berkshire Poetry Char- 
acterized — What Pittsfield is Proud of — Fable of a 
Socialist Community— Berkshire Scenery — A Haunt 
for Literary Lions — Melville and Hawthorne — Long- 
fellow, the Old Clock on the Stairs, and Roaring 
Brook — Charles Sumner and Fanny Kemble — Dr. 
Holmes and the Newspaper Press. 

One who glances at the title-page of this lit- 
tle volume will naturally ask: "What is its 
object? Why should it be compiled at all?" 
Impertinent questions deserve no answer; and 
queries like these would be impertinent if made 
about a work in the ordinary course of liter- 
ature, where an author's will is autocratic in 
conferring titles. But this diverges from that 
course in a manner which limits the editor's 
independence — to say nothing of autocracy. 
Thus the supposed questions, being natural, are 
pertinent; and, being pertinent, are to be an- 
swered. 



8 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

The answer is not far to seek. Whatever else 
may follow, our primal object is to bring to- 
gether from the many poems of a great author 
a few which are so marked by distinctive char- 
acteristics derived from the region of peculiar 
and intense individuality in which they were 
written, that they form a class by themselves. 
The purpose in annotating these poems is this: 
while most of them are now precious posses- 
sions of all English-speaking peoples, they were 
local in their inception and development. A 
description of the scenery which helped to in- 
spire them, with a narration of the circum- 
stances which led to their writing, and of those 
which attended their only public delivery in 
their author's living voice, may therefore en- 
able the reader to enjoy, in addition to the 
inherent charms of the verse, something of that 
indescribable, and in a degree evanescent, 
sparkle and flavor which enchanted those who 
listened to its silver-toned enunciation fresh 
from the poet's heart and lips, while their own 
sympathies were attuned to harmony with what 
they heard by accompaniments that we shall 
endeavor to reproduce in such measure as we 
may. 

If, in pursuing the purposes expressed, there 
shall seem to be a claim in behalf of the town 
of Pittsfield to some considerable share in the 
honor which attaches to every place and every 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. g 

institution with which the name of Oliver Wen- 
dell Holmes is in any way associated, we ap- 
prehend that the claim will be made good. The 
ardent expressions of his regard for the town, 
which we shall quote in the proper connections, 
will leave no doubt that if he could himself be 
conscious of such claim, he would fully approve 
it, imperfectly as it may be urged here; as, we 
believe, all who have a right to represent him 
will. 

Liberal participation in the heritage of honor 
left by Dr. Holmes would be accorded to Pitts- 
field, even if her claim rested solely upon the 
basis that he wrote the beautiful poems in this 
collection under the influence of her scenery 
and of life associated with it, and that, before 
he committed them to the printer, he read 
them before large assemblages of her citizens 
and others gathered with them on grand public 
occasions. Something of this appears in the 
general collections of his works; but some of 
the verses inserted here are not included in 
those volumes; and others do not clearly in- 
dicate their birthplace. If, however, this were 
otherwise, it would not fully cover Pittsfield's 
claim upon the poet's memory. That rests 
upon a broader foundation, as we shall see. 

Students of Dr. Holmes' works will observe 
that, in striking contrast with his other writ- 
ings, there is in his Berkshire poems no allusion 



lo THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

to scientific or classic lore, save a playful mention 
of the winged steed that he did not have, as he 
had swapped it away for a ploughman's horse. 
Nor is there much of the humor in which he 
excelled; although it laughs in two or three 
minor pieces, and pretty gayly in some prefatory 
speeches. But, for the most part, all is Nature; 
and Nature without scientific analysis, as she 
here spreads out her works for all who, like Dr. 
Holmes, have eyes to see; combined with the 
human sympathies which left nothing which 
pertained to humanity foreign to him. A terse 
writer of many true thoughts says: "Nature 
has no morbid strain." It is a sentiment that 
might have come from Dr. Holmes himself as 
a companion line to that in his Pittsfield Ceme- 
tery poem: "Cheerful Nature owns no mourn- 
ing flower." He remembered both these traits 
in Nature's authorship when he made the trans- 
lations of her works that his Berkshire poems 
essentially are. There is nothing in them either 
morbid or gloomy. 

Said Jean Paul : " To describe any scene 
well, the poet must make the bosom of a man 
his camera obscura. Then will he see it poeti- 
cally." Such a camera Dr. Holmes used in all 
his paintings of Berkshire scenery. And thus 
it was that the outcome of what he saw poeti- 
cally was not reserved merely for lettered read- 
ers, but was freely mingled with the associated 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. ii 

mental activities of men, whether that activity- 
manifested itself in a body of farmers, the fra- 
ternal alumni oi his alma mater or a whole organ- 
ized community. But whether his verse was 
addressed to a learned, an unlearned, or a mixed 
auditory, his perfect accord with the harmonies 
of nature and his fine poetic sense, with his 
all controling pure taste, made it intelligible 
to and enjoyable by all. 

Dr. Holmes had those rare intellectual gifts 
which, possessed as he possessed them, afford 
sure touchstones of genius: Capacity for great, 
beautiful, and true thought, with a faultless 
method of expressing it; both the thought and 
the expression of it being peculiar to himself; 
modeled upon no other author or school of 
authors; and transcending, not only the com- 
mon level of authordom, but its elevations con- 
spicuous enough to be observable. We speak 
of genius in the abstract, and perhaps have a 
fairly correct idea of it, as a congenital endow- 
ment of some few favored minds with powers, 
exceeding those of mere talent, for life-work 
to which it irresistibly impels them. But in- 
dividual genius is unique, and therefore is to 
be studied individually. A clever biographer 
says: "The intellect of Holmes, though mani- 
festing many strongly marked attributes, eludes 
all tests, preserves its individuality, and re- 
mains unclassified among original elements." 



12 THE POET AMONG THE HFLLS. 

True; but it does not follow that the products 
of these attributes cannot be classified. In- 
deed they classify themselves. The genius of 
Dr. Holmes has many sides; and it is not for 
us to attempt an analysis even of that which 
was turned toward Berkshire. He, however, 
would be a singular reader, who should enjoy 
a favorite class of the poems of a favorite 
author for half a century without gaining 
some impression of what it was that charmed 
him. 

In the light of such an impression, the ruling 
quality in Dr. Holmes' Berkshire poems is their 
entire naturalness. It is Nature herself that 
breathes through each and every line. While 
reading them we feel that what we enjoy was 
as much an "elixir of delight" for him when he 
received it from her as it is for us when we re- 
ceive it from him. We need no analysis to as- 
sure us that it is the free uncontaminated outflow 
from a full and pure fountain, and not an in- 
different stream from a force-pump. 

And yet the genius of Dr. Holmes, as dis- 
played in his Berkshire poems — which alone 
concern us here — had distinctive, although not 
obtrusively startling elements. They were very 
like the characteristics which a great critic 
ascribes admiringly to a German biographical 
writer whom he esteems of extraordinary merit. 
*' The poet must express his inmost qualities in 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 13 

his verse ; and the noblest poetry in all its va- 
ried but harmonious elements is the visible soul 
of the noblest man," And, with the slight 
modifications that we make, what Carlyle says 
of his admired author will apply equally well 
to the Berkshire poems of Dr. Holmes, and to 
himself as revealed in them. In style these 
poems are distinguished for clearness and grace 
of method, and for comprehensibility. In mat- 
ter they point to an author of affectionate and 
exquisitely sympathetic nature; courteous but 
truthful ; precise in expression ; of quick appre- 
hension ; of just, extensive, often deep and fine, 
insight. This delineates very accurately the 
characteristics of Dr. Holmes in his relations 
to Berkshire as a poet. Nevertheless, coinci- 
dence with the intellectual constitution of Varn- 
hagen von Ense does not in the least militate 
against the uniqueness of the American's ge- 
nius; for in its processes and their fruit, the 
brain-work of the two men differed as essentially 
as biography differs from poetry. 

It is no part of our purpose to attempt the 
slightest critical analysis of these Berkshire 
poems. Even could such an attempt succeed, 
the success would be out of all place here. The 
mourner might as well accompany the wreath 
he lays upon the tomb hallowed by affection, or 
the lover the bouquet he sends his mistress, 
with a botanical classification of its flowers. 



14 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

That charm of poetry which penetrates all 
hearts open to the entrance of pure pleasures, 
and is enjoyed without conscious volition, is 
beyond analysis; and, even if some grim sage 
could resolve such subtile and ethereal joys into 
their ultimate elements, it would not enable 
him to reproduce the God-given odor of the 
rose or the inspired melody of the song, nor 
would his learned exposition add one whit to 
any soul's delight in them. 

Every word in Dr. Holmes' verses has its 
meaning, and every sentence makes its impres- 
sion. The meaning is clear and the impression 
is distinct — often incisive — without the aid of 
any interpreter; but those familiar with the 
scenes amid which, and the themes upon which, 
he wrote may recognize meanings and receive 
impressions hidden from readers not thus fa- 
vored. To extend this familiarity more widely 
is the leading object of the annotation in this 
volume. We trust that it will not be looked 
upon as an attempt to gild refined gold; but 
rather with charitable eyes, as only an effort 
to expose a little more of it to view. Some- 
body has said that notes to a fine poem are like 
an anatomical lecture on a savory joint; but 
surely the most succulent and savory joint may 
be accompanied by condiments, provided that 
they develop, and do not mar or obscure, its 
native flavor. And any good housewife will 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 15 

tell US that some attention ought to be paid to 
the table on which it is served. 

There is a side lesson taught by the wealth 
of poetry which this collection presents as the 
product of a brief interval of the poet's life. 
An old man in his moody moments, looking 
back over years which have vanished, leaving 
little to represent them, may be tempted to say 
with the Portuguese poet : 

What is life? A wild illusion, 
Fleeting shadow ; fond delusion, 
Whose most steadfast substance seems 
But the dream of other dreams. 

But one who has frequently to write even of 
commonplace lives and in the biographical- 
dictionary style, learns how much that is worth 
the doing is often scattered along very ordinary 
careers, often of much less than three-score 
years and ten. But when he contemplates the 
achievements, of deathless fame and priceless 
value, that were compressed into a fraction 
of Oliver Wendell Holmes' seven summers in 
Pittsfield, he is struck with amazement. The 
study affords a striking object-lesson for the 
young ; for although powers of achievement like 
those of Dr. Holmes are rare, it is no reason, 
because our one, two, or three talents do not 
mount to the ten called genius, that they should 
be left to run to waste. They need the more 
cultivation, 



1 6 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

And yet another ground for this compilation, 
if another is needed, will be found in the hope 
that it may render some of Pittsfield's own peo- 
ple more familiar with the poems comprised in 
it, and incidentally lead to a wider acquaintance 
with all the works of their author, — to the great 
advantage of their taste in literature, as well as 
in other matters. Nor will it be of small value, 
if, by giving any an intelligent and clear appre- 
ciation of the great poet's relations to their town, 
it shall at once strengthen and make more 
rational their pride in it. And Southey, in the 
passage from his " Doctor, " which we have 
made our initial motto, shows that pride in 
one's own home-town is a most excellent thing 
to have, even if it leads to an estimate of its 
merits so undue and so disproportionate in com- 
parison with the rest of the world, that it makes 
us appear rustic or provincial in cosmopolitan 
eyes. 

And this brings us back to our primary 
motor: Pittsfield's home pride, and the justifi- 
cation of it by Dr. Holmes' legacy of honor, and 
otherwise. 

Pittsfield, through the best representatives of 
its local pride, piques itself upon its complete- 
ness. Now, completeness is essentially different 
from perfection. Holy Scripture declares that 
"There is none perfect: no, not one." And he 
must indeed be " a blinded bigot" of a skeptic, 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 17 

who, living among men, disputes this averment, 
even if he denies its divine inspiration. There 
is no perfect man. To be sure, we do now and 
then, in biographical histories, or perhaps, at 
wide intervals, in living examples, come upon 
a tolerably complete man: one whose physical, 
intellectual, and moral natures all closely ap- 
proximate perfection. But inevitably in some 
unguarded moment some little flaw or frailty 
betrays the infirmity of humanity even at its 
best. In the common mass of men, the perfec- 
tion of an individual in one quality or in one 
ability is most often attained by the sacrifice of 
even moderate excellence in every other. We 
have somewhere read a story in which the scene 
was laid a couple of centuries, more or less, in 
the future, and in a country where triumphant 
socialism had subjected every thing to the con- 
trol of a truly paternal government. Men and 
women were married, being officially paired 
after an official examination to determine their 
fitness for each other. The children born to 
this officially authorized union were trained by 
government officials for the special occupation 
and position in the world to which they had 
been officially assigned in babyhood, after a 
phrenological inspection — also official — to ascer- 
tain for what, in official opinion, wise Nature 
created each particular little one. Under this 
official process all the mental and physical 
2 



1 8 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

faculties of a child which his officially pre- 
determined station in life demanded were per- 
fectly developed. All the rest dwindled to 
iiselessness. Thus the fabled state had perfect 
blacksmiths and barristers, clergymen and car- 
penters, hair-dressers and hod-carriers, and so 
on to the end of the chapter; but not one single 
complete man. 

Now, even as men are, so are the towns which 
they build, inhabit, and, for one reason or an- 
other, love and take pride in; that is, unless 
they are of the class without a tap-root, against 
whom Southey's " Doctor" sharply warns us. 
There may be towns and cities in which a too 
predominant devotion to one pursuit in life has 
had an effect similar to that of the ideal devel- 
opment and repression of each individual's 
natural faculties which our story-teller paints 
as the logical outcome of socialist theories of 
government. These, however, are rare excep- 
tions. Either from natural advantages, well- 
directed public spirit, personal enterprise and 
liberality, or a confluence of streams from sev- 
eral of these fountain-heads of prosperity and 
excellence, most American towns come reason- 
ably near to perfection in more than one or two 
of the elements which, if all were present in 
like degree, would constitute what might be 
properly called completeness: that is, a com- 
plete circle of those elements, such as manu- 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 19 

factures and commerce, with the means and the 
spirit to advance them ; healthfulness with the 
best sanitary provisions to retain it; a culti- 
vated community, with schools, libraries, and 
other facilities for, and incitements to, further 
culture; religious institutions adapted to vary- 
ing creeds and forms of worship; noble and 
beautiful scenery ; with whatever else is need- 
ful to invite and satisfy permanent or alternate 
residents, as well as those who seek a brief 
resort for health or pleasure. 

What those uncompromising representatives 
and champions of Pittsfield's pride, we spoke of 
awhile ago, claim and pique themselves upon 
in behalf of their idolized town is this, that in 
it the circle of these widely varied elements of 
completeness, and of others cognate to them, 
is, without exception, complete: not that each 
or any of them is complete or perfect in itself; 
but that the good town is distinguished by a 
fairly close approach to perfection in each and 
is steadily advancing toward it in all where 
Nature admits advance. 

Philosophic Thomas Carlyle makes an asser- 
tion concerning the building of men's habita- 
tions that affords a parallel to the Scriptural 
apothegm regarding their own moral and intel- 
lectual structure. "Perfection," heavers, "is 
unattainable. No carpenter in the world ever 
made a mathematically accurate right-angle; 



20 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

yet all carpenters know when it is right enough ; 
and do not botch their work and lose their 
■wages by making it too right." Still there are 
many right-angles in the framework of a house, 
and if most of them do not closely approximate 
mathematical accuracy, it will never come to 
completion. Doubtless what Mr. Carlyle means 
is a legal maxim slightly varied: De minimis 
lex 7iaturce non arratnr — The law of nature does 
not concern itself about trifles. Nor should 
men trouble themselves about trifling errors in 
their own work. Nevertheless even approxi- 
mate perfection is not likely to be attained in a 
structure of any kind unless the absolute is kept 
in view: and much less if it is deliberately 
thrust out of sight. Strive as we may, there is 
no danger of getting near enough to perfection 
to "botch our work." 

The structure of a town is very like that of a 
man. It has, or should have, body, mind, and 
soul ; and each of these distinct components 
needs cultivation. So long as a just balance is 
reserved, we need not fear that either will get 
too much of it. There will always be room for 
more. Better so: Who but a drone would wish 
to live in a place where there is no call for 
effort, or even strife, to make it better? It 
would be insufferably dull. 

Town? city? country? Call Pittsfield which 
you will ; for us, it is the same old long-loved 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 21 

town. A city charter does not change its 
nature. The greater portion of its territory 
still remains quite as fit for a quiet, secluded 
country home as any rural region whatever; 
while almost all the rest is a striking example 
of the rus in urbc, country and city interpenetrat- 
ing each other. We think that, on the whole, 
we will keep to the stalwart old New England 
word, town; under which Pittsfield, like so 
many of her sister Massachusetts municipalities 
— and conspicuously among them — has, in one 
way or another,- won so much honor that it may 
rightfully be called glory. 

But to return: There is one element in 
Pittsfield's circle of completeness which our un^ 
compromising ultraists wall not, under any 
compulsion, admit to fall one little iota short of 
absolute perfection. This is her scenery, which, 
they insist, lacks literally nothing that inland 
landscape can have to make it altogether en- 
chanting. This is a trifle extravagant. Very 
critical eyes — even if not hypercritical or 
sharpened by jealousy as our enthusiasts would 
be likely to charge — very critical eyes may by 
close scrutiny detect here and there a blot, to 
sustain Carlyle's dictum of the imipossible, even 
when applied to the wealth of color, grace, and 
grandeur that enriches the valley here em- 
bosomed among the symmetrical dome-crowned 
hills of Berkshire. And yet this extravagant 



22 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

claim is so plausibly and pleasantl)' like truth 
that an observer at all sensitive to Nature's 
loveliness will find it in his heart rather to 
sympathize with than harshly to utterly reject 
it: especially if his visit shall happen on one of 
those glorious summer or autumn days, when 
the foam on the waterfalls, bound though they 
be in servitude to mill-wheels, is "excellently 
bright," and the hillside denudings of the coal- 
burner's ax, though rough as his unshaven 
face, are encircled with undulating curves of 
a livelier, richer verdure than that of the sur- 
rounding unbroken foliage; curves that often, 
on a November or December night, are trans- 
formed into serpentine borders of living fire, as 
the dry brushwood, heaped along the edges of 
the rude openings, is set aflame by a chance 
spark or by a woodman's match. 

But let pass perfection. What have we, im- 
perfect mortals, to do with it anyhow? Pitts- 
field's scenery is at least quite good enough for 
the best of us; and the best of us best appreci- 
ate and enjoy it. To its thus appreciatively 
enjoyed charms, the town's parks and its broad 
streets, park-like by virtue of their wide fringes 
of grass-carpeted courtyards, and their noble 
colonnades of overhanging elms and maples, 
contribute not a little; but very much more is 
due to its magnificent outlook in every direc- 
tion, to a boundary of mountain ranges sur- 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 23 

passed by none in their grace of contour and the 
majesty of their grand curvilinear sweep around 
the horizon. Standing on any considerable 
elevation near the main streets, such as the 
platform-roof of the Academy of Music or the 
tower of the Maplewood Gymnasium, the spec- 
tator finds himself, more than a thousand feet 
above the sea level, in the center of an ellipti- 
cal valley fifty miles long, with the proportions 
in area which architects love to give their 
choicest structures, while the symmetry with 
which point answers to opposing point exceeds 
the attainment of art. Within its green and 
graceful encircling walls lies cradled a rolling 
country of minor hills and valleys; with, here 
and there, a fertile plain. A hundred lakelets, 
mostly in the low lands, but sometimes on the 
ver}^ hill-tops, dot the wide landscape with the 
gleam of their dimpling waters; while frequent 
towns, villages, fine farm-houses, and not a few 
costly country-seats endow it with human life. 
Through this superb upland valley flows, re- 
nowmed in song and story, the "blue, winding 
Housatonic;" receiving in its myriad graceful 
meanders the silvery tribute of unnumbered 
rills and streamlets. Upon this vision of 
beauty looks down, from the northernmost 
border of Massachusetts, Greylock, its loftiest 
summit, in more than mountain majest}' — 
often of a summer morning, " cloud-girdled 



24 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

on his purple throne;" adding grandeur to 
grace. 

Of course all this is not visible to our specta- 
tor in every detail; but what he does see will 
enable him to comprehend the whole. And 
what he will note as a pleasant peculiarity is 
that, multitudinous as the mountains are around 
him, not one is oppressively near. 

Features like these, thus combined, go far 
toward constituting perfect scenery; and, ad- 
mitting the impossibility of perfections, let it 
also be admitted that this " borders on the im- 
possible. " If, however, Pittsfield scenery had 
been undeniably perfect and complete in all 
that meets the eye, those who are now its most 
loyal and ardent worshipers would have been 
first to acknowledge that something was yet 
lacking, had there not been associated with it 
a record of heroic and patriotic men and deeds; 
and had it not received a soul from the living 
and loving presence of men and women of ge- 
nius, and the magic touch of their pens. With- 
out such accessories no affluence of Nature's 
loveliness suffices a landscape. We need not 
recount the town's brave and patriotic action 
from its earliest to its latest days, whenever the 
country's peril has called for it, nor recall the 
names of the patriots and heroes who have given 
luster to its annals. Enough of both for our 
present purpose is embalmed in the country's 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 25 

history. Nor should we speak specifically of 
the men and women of letters who have helped 
to give it character and fame, were it not that 
comparatively few readers are familiar with 
literary biographical history; and did not what 
we shall say lead up to and illustrate our ulti- 
mate subject. As it is, we shall confine our- 
selves to little more than cursory mention of a 
very few of the very many whose mere names 
would call up charmed thoughts for cultured 
loiterers along the delightful avenues that, 
branching in every direction from Pittsfield's 
beautiful and historic little central park, stretch 
away into regions of ever-varying landscape, 
revealing at every turn what poetic Governor 
Andrew so happily termed " the delicious sur- 
prises of Berkshire." 

There is a kind of commonplace people who 
have an unaccountable but inveterate hankering 
to get where commonplace people are out of 
place. Their most preposterous, but seemingly 
irresistible proclivity is, to inflict names as com- 
monplace as they can pick out from their 
commonplace observation upon localities, and 
whatever else is as far from commonplace, as 
the commonplace very often is from common- 
sense. It is not much to the credit of a com- 
munity with plenty of good taste that its list- 
less indifference often permits this unhappy 
craze to have its wicked way: for it is wicked 



26 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

to soil with Stupidity what Nature has made 
beautiful and genius has hallowed. But such 
soiling- is permitted. And thus it happened 
that one of the most superb avenues which en- 
tice the lover of Nature's loveliness into the 
romantic regions around — and one with the 
proudest associations — became " Middle Street," 
for the, to a commonplace mind, good and 
sufficient reason that it is, beyond all ques- 
tion, the middle road of three between Pittsfield 
and Lenox. 

This avenue affords a superb "drive," com- 
manding broad and noble^ views of mountains, 
hills, and valleys, and of the Housatonic River, 
which it crosses. The same, excepting the 
river, is, however, true of all Pittsfield, and of 
most Berkshire roads. But this Middle Street 
— which, thanks to some reformers of taste, we 
shall not be again forced to call by that stupid 
name — this Middle Street— this ci-devant Middle 
Street somewhat excels all its rivals in some 
regards of which commonplace people know 
little, comprehend less, and care not at all. 
There are pleasant, patriotic, quaint, curious, 
and romantic traditions associated with one or 
another of all these rides and walks; but this 
middle road to Lenox has the advantage in this, 
that it was the earliest highway in the town- 
ship; being part of the first which crossed 
Berkshire from the Connecticut boundary-line 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 27 

on the south to that of Vermont on the north. 
Even before the coming of the white man the 
Mohegans had a trail nearly coincident with it, 
and more of their relics have been found in its 
vicinity than in any other section of Pittsfield. 
It must also have been the pathway of the early 
settlers from the Connecticut valley; and the 
magnates among them clustered so thickly in 
its neighborhood as to make it out of question 
the court end of the young town. Here and 
now, however, its predominant interest for us 
lies in the fact that on it was the summer-home 
of Oliver Wendell Holmes and that of his an- 
cestors for three generations before him. Of 
this we shall have occasion to speak more at 
large in another connection. It is sufficient to 
say here that the death of Dr. Holmes revived 
attention to these facts; intensifying the repug- 
nance to the insipidity of the old name in the 
minds of citizens of culture and influence, at 
whose instance the City Council changed it to 
Holmes Road. And Holmes Road it will be 
while Pittsfield streets have names: adding, by 
the associations which it will recall, a new 
charm to an already charming region; and giv- 
ing the city a new memorial of the poet's life 

in it. 

But let us resume our purpose of citing a few 
examples of authors, besides Dr. Holmes, dis- 
tinguished in the higher walks of literary com- 



28 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

position and eloquent utterance, who have 
helped to invest Pittsfield with interest for the 
admirers of genius and the lovers of literature. 
Naturally the first which comes to mind is Dr. 
Holmes' nearest neighbor, of the guild of let- 
ters — Herman Melville. A gentle elevation 
on the west side of Holmes Road, a few rods 
south of its namesake's summer villa, is crowned 
by a spacious, old-fashioned gambrel-roofed 
mansion, rich in the memories of more than a 
century. Mr. Melville must have known it 
well in his youth, when he was in the family of 
his uncle, Major Thomas Melville, in the still 
more historic old mansion now known as Broad- 
hall ; and was master of a district school so 
located that his nearest way to it was through 
the farm attached to the gambrel-roofed house of 
Holmes Road. In 1848, shortly after his mar- 
riage, and the brilliant success of his first books, 
'*Omoo" and "Typee," he passed the summer 
in the same old broad-hailed mansion,* which 

* In calling this old mansion "Broadhail" here and 
elsewhere, we deliberately, for the sake of convenience 
and intelligibility, commit an anachronism, rather than 
change the name with every change of owners, which 
is the country wont. It was named some three years 
after Melvill*^, Longfellow, and ex-President Tyler were 
boarders in it ; and in this wise : It had then become 
the residence of Mr. J. R. Morewood, and at a little 
party in its parlors— not by any means "all silent." it 
was declared that a mansion with so much character 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 29 

was then a boarding-house, where, among other 
agreeable fellow-boarders, he found the poet 
Longfellow with his wife and children. This 
summer at Broadhall reviving his acquaint- 
ance, with its neighbor, the old farm-house of 
Holmes Read, he bought ii, and it was his well- 
loved home for many years. He named the 
place " Arrowhead ;" having, in his first plowing 
of its fields, turned up one of " the pointed flints 
that left the fatal bow" of the Mohegan warrior 
or hunter. He found the mansion a spacious 
gambrel-roofed house of two stories; he made 
it a house of many stories; writing in it almost 
all his later works. Among these the most 
locally interesting, though far from the most 
widely known, is the *' Piazza Tales;" so titled 
because its stories were built upon a piazza 
which he added to the north end of the house 
where it overlooks a noble landscape, extend- 
ing through a picturesque vista of twenty miles, 

ought to have a significant name. The selection of 
one from the variety proposed was left to chance. Each 
proposer wrote his proposed name on a slip of paper 
and dropped it in a basket ; the first drawn from it. to 
be accepted. This chanced to be "Broadhall," which 
was written by Herman Melville. The selection was 
so "pat" that it was hailed with unanimous approval; 
although some serious, or rather merry, suspicion was 
expressed that chance— lest she might prove Miss Chance 
— had a judicious adviser in the person of some one of 
the ladies of the mansion. 



30 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

to Greylock, — to Greylock, ever companionably 
present in Berkshire, whatever miles may in- 
tervene. A New England farm-house so vener- 
able as that at Arrowhead could not fail of its 
huge old elephantine chimney; and Mr. Mel- 
ville made it the hero of one of his most curious 
and characteristic sketches, " My Chimney and 
I." He regarded it as the overbearing tyrant 
of his home, as he, himself, very decidedly was 
not. 

Mr. Melville was extravagantly fond of ex- 
cursions among the Berkshire hills and valleys; 
a well-preserved relic of his early passion for 
far wider wanderings. His rambles were never 
solitary, and rarely with a single companion 
unless they involved more than one day's tramp 
on foot. He rather delighted to lead parties of 
kindred tastes; often including guests of note 
from abroad, and always some ladies of his own 
and intimately friendly families. In such fel- 
lowship he climbed to every alluring hill-top, 
and explored every picturesque corner and hid- 
den nook that he could hear of, or find by seek- 
ing. Picnic revelers may be sure that whatever 
romantic camping-ground they choose in Berk- 
shire, Herman Melville has been there before 
them, and that its echoes have rung with the 
laughter and the merry shouts of his rollicking 
followers. From many of these resorts he drew 
pictures for his tales; among others, from Bal- 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 31 

ance Rock, Potter Mountain — a favorite with 
him — and the . grand rounded summit — about 
two miles southwest from his residence and 
from that of Dr. Holmes — which he named 
October Mountain for the gorgeousness of its 
autumn tints. 

An incident of singular interest marked one 
of his excursions; and though it happened be- 
tween Stockbridge and Great Barrington, it 
will bring us back to Holmes Road. We con- 
stantly need something to bring us back from 
the wanderings to which we are enticed by 
Berkshire's beauties. 

In 1849, Nathaniel Hawthorne came to live 
awhile in the little red cottage, which he made 
famous, on the border of the Stockbridge Bowl 
— the Sedgwick-Sigourney name for what the 
learned map-makers call Lake Mahekanituck — 
some seven miles south of Arrowhead. Mel- 
ville had written for The Nnv York Literary 
World, edited by his friends the brothers 
Duyckinck, a most appreciative and singularly 
sympathetic review of "The Scarlet Letter." 
This article was not only appreciative of, but 
appreciated by, Hawthorne. Yet when the two 
authors came to be neighbors, as neighborhood 
is reckoned in the country, there was at first 
a certain shyness in their intercourse; probably 
from the fear of each lest he should seem to the 
other to presume too much upon what he had 



32 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

said and done. It was a sensitiveness natural 
to the pride of genius; but sp shadowy and 
irksome a barrier could not long keep apart 
men so formed for fellowship. It was broken 
down during an excursion when the two were 
driven by a sudden, severe, and prolonged sum- 
mer shower to take refuge together in a 
narrow recess on the west side of Bryant's Mon- 
ument Mountain. There, undisturbed by the 
tumult of the elements, the two great original 
thinkers and writers, neither of them "made 
altogether by the common pattern," learned to 
know each other; mind to mind and heart to 
heart. Thenceforward their friendship was 
that of kindred though diverse intellects; and 
of faith and feeling in which they were not 
diverse. 

The intercourse thus founded extended to the 
families of the two friends. Hawthorne's biog- 
rapher tells us that when Melville was ap- 
proaching the cottage by the lake, a joyous 
shout went up: " Here comes Typee!" the pet 
name they had given him. With Mr. Melville's 
free, hearty, and jovial, although always high- 
bred and dignified, manner, this might have 
been expected; but Mr. Hawthorne, also, could 
throw off his reserve for a roll and a frolic with 
children; and he was as welcome at Arrowhead 
as Melville was at the lakeside. It is not this 
chiefly, however, that brings us back to Holmes 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 33 

Road. As we learn from the same biographer, 
one who passed over it in 1849-50 might some- 
times have enjoyed a rare spectacle. If it 
chanced to be in summer or early autumn, the 
great barn-doors of the Arrowhead barn would 
have been wide open, and if he cast a glance 
within he might have seen the two friends, 
reclining on piles of fragrant new-mown hay, 
and basking in the genial in-pouring rays of 
the sun, while they held high converse on the 
mysteries and revelations of the world and those 
who people it. 

We pass from Holmes Road, the Canoe 
Meadows, Arrowhead, and their memories, to 
courtly East Street, Elm Knoll and the " House 
of the Old Clock on the Stairs ;" with the mem- 
ories they recall. 

The story which locates in " the old-fash- 
ioned country-seat" of Elm Knoll the ancient 
timepiece celebrated in Longfellow's exquisite 
poem has been so often told that it almost 
seems trite ; and yet a brief, exact restatement 
may please many readers of the soulful verses. 

Very early in the century now drawing to a 
close, the old mansion, even then not unstoried, 
became the residence of Thomas Gold, a law- 
yer of some note, and a man of wealth as wealth 
was then counted in Berkshire. His daughter, 
Maria Theresa, became the wife of Hon. Nathan 
Appleton, a Boston gentleman of culture and 
3 



34 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

distinction. After Mr. Gold's death, the home- 
stead, although the property and home of his 
widow while she lived, was the summer resi- 
dence of the Appleton family. Mrs. Gold, like 
all the ladies of the Gold-Appleton connection, 
was remarkable for dignity, grace, and kindli- 
ness of manner. Her intellectual character, 
based on good native abilities, the best home 
education the country then afforded, and the 
highest principles, had been broadened and 
refined by European travel. Her relations with 
the Appleton family must have been most 
agreeable. 

After a most romantic wooing, the poet 
Longfellow " won the heart and hand" of 
Nathan Appleton 's daughter, Frances Eliza- 
beth; as one of ^Ir. Longfellow's biographers 
states, "while she was spending a summer in 
Pittsfield. " We are not quite sure of that. But, 
at any rate, they were married at Boston, July 
J 3, 1843, and the last and longest of their three 
wedding tours was to visit the bride's relatives 
and friends in Pittsfield, where they lingered 
until late in August. Then the poet first saw 
the old clock at the head of the broad flight of 
stairs leading from the spacious entrance-hall 
of the Gold-Appleton mansion. He did not, 
however, begin to wnite the poem which has 
made it famous until November 12, 1845, when 
its memory was recalled by a passage in the 



v^^iH 




HENRY W. LONGFELLOW 
In 1844. 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 35 

writings of Bridaine, an old French missionary; 
which also furnished the refrain, "Forever, 
never! Never, forever" — " Toujours^ jamais! 
Jamais, toujours T The poem at once attained 
remarkable popularity, which half a century 
has increased rather than diminished. And the 
frequent allusions to it in its author's diary 
show that it was as much a favorite with him 
as it was with his readers. The marvelous hold 
which it took upon multitudes of hearts is ex- 
plained by the elements of deep thought and 
feeling which combine in it. The refrain sug- 
gests and almost expresses the emotions that 
spring irrepressibly while contemplating a time- 
piece of past fashion, that has marked the hours 
as they grew to years, and the years as they 
grew to generations in an old family mansion. 
Consonant with this voice from the dial is the 
story, which the poet makes the ancient time- 
piece tell, of life and of death in that mansion. 
This story has its counterpart in mansion homes 
all over the country and in all countries of 
mansion homes. Nay; in all essential particu- 
lars, in cottage homes as well. The poet 
painted his passing scenes not only vividly, but 
" using the bosom of a man as his camera ob- 
sciira;' and the result was what always happens 
when poets like Holmes and Longfellow adopt 
the practice commended by Jean Paul. Mr. 
Longfellow must himself have felt that he had 



36 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

celebrated the mansion as much at least as the 
clock on its stairs; for, it will be observed that 
in his diary he rarely speaks of the old clock 
'simply, but almost invariably of the "House 
of the Old Clock." The clock was of the tall 
old-fashioned kind -made in Pittsfield and Lanes- 
boro, late in the last century and early in the 
present. In old Berkshire families they are 
preserved as precious heirlooms, while strangers 
buy them at high prices merely as "antiques." 
That which Longfellow saw in 

J.-- ">, J -,:."Th@ ol4- fashioned country seat. 
Somewhat back from the village street, " 

aiid'-made eloquent on its rostrum there, was, 
som'e years ago, called to Boston, where it 
stands in the hallway of the Appleton mansion. 
Professor Longfellow placed one of the same 
class in thfe hall of the Graigie House, his Cam- 
bridge residence, where many visitors errone- 
ously supposed it to be the original clock of 
the poem. 

Mr. Longfellow's wedding visit to Pittsfield 
was followed by others. The most interesting 
was in the summer of 1849, which he spent at 
the Broadhall boarding-house. He was much 
impressed by the beauty of the neighboring 
South Mountain, and the variety of grand views 
from it. He took great pleasure with his chil- 
dren on the shores of the charming lakelet in 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 37 

the Broadhall grounds, where he one day had 
an adventure, with danger enough to give it 
ze^t. The little ones craved some beautiful 
pond-lilies that floated on the surface, of the 
lakelet— to which some of the later ladies of 
Broadhall gave the pet name of " The Lily^ 
Bowl." There was no craft near, save a crazy, 
leaky little boat; but, like the devoted father 
and child-lover he was, he risked himself in it 
to secure the coveted prize, although the' miser^ 
able little broken sljell threatened every mo- 
ment to sink with him. He tells of several 
pleasant drives, but was clearly the most de- 
lighted with an afternoon excursion to Roaring 
Brook. This notable mountain streamlet dashes 
down a romantic gorge in the west side of Wash- 
ington Mountain,-^a summit- of the Ho6sacs a 
couple of miles southwest of Dr. Holmes' villa. 
Mr. Longfellow visited it one summer day and 
gives the following spirited account of the ex- 
cursion and word-painting of the brook and 
gorge in his diary: 

August 2c?///.— In the morning, sat with the 
children by the water-wheel in the brook, then 
walked to the village, for carriage to take us in 
the afternoon to Roaring Brook. A lovely drive, 
and lovelier walk. Leaving the carriage at the 
foot of the hill, we climbed the rough w^gon- 
way along the borders of the brook, catching 
glimpses of its waterfalls through the woods, 



38 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

and hearing the perpetual music of its murmur. 
The water is of a livel)^ brown color, like Rhen- 
ish wine — the Olympian wine spilled from the 
goblet of Hebe when she fell. We climbed as 
far as the mill — a saw-mill, bringing to mind 
the little poem translated from the German by 
Bryant." 

At the time of this excursion, Longfellow 
was writing his novel " Kavanagh" — an enchant- 
ing little volume for readers of dainty taste and 
thought — and he painted his visit into it in 
glowing colors. George Lowell Austin, in his 
"Life, Works and Friendships of Longfellow," 
says: "The tale was written in the Melville 
House [Broadhall — Ed.] not far from the Pitts- 
field home of Dr. Holmes. Most of the scenery 
and a little of the story was derived from his 
wooing and marriage." The paragraph regard- 
ing the Roaring Brook is as follows: 

" Every State, and almost every county of 
New England has its Roaring Brook — a moun- 
tain streamlet, overhung by woods, impeded by 
a mill, encumbered by fallen trees; but ever- 
rushing, racing, roaring down, through gur- 
gling gullies and filling the forest with its 
delicious sound and freshness: the drinking- 
places of home-returning herds; the mysteri- 
ous haunts of squirrels and blue-jays; the syl- 
van retreat of schoolboys, who frequent it in 
summer holidays and mingle their restless 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 39 

thoughts with its restless, exuberant, and re- 
joicing stream." 

Longfellow was not the only guest of the 
House of the Old Clock who left choice memo- 
ries behind. In Mr. Appleton's time many 
such enjoyed its hospitality. Of these Charles 
Sumner has for us the deepest interest. In the 
late summer of 1844, he was slowly recovering 
from an alarming illness, and his physician ad- 
vised him that Berkshire air would greatly 
hasten and confirm his convalescence. He was 
a great favorite with the Appleton family, and 
one of Longfellow's dearest friends, having 
been groomsman at his wedding with Miss Ap- 
pleton a year before. He was therefore invited 
to make their country-seat his home as long as 
he would, and, accepting the invitation, he be- 
came their guest for several weeks. His visit 
delighted him and his recovery was rapid. 
There was one circumstance which contributed 
materially to his enjoyment, which will also 
contribute materially to the testimony we are 
accumulating from the most widely informed 
and fastidious witnesses to the summer loveli- 
ness of the region around Dr. Holmes' summer 
home. 

Hon. Edward A. Newton, a friend and neigh- 
bor of the Appletons, and a man quick to per- 
ceive and appreciate intellectual qualities like 
those of their guest, loaned him a fine saddle- 



40 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

horse, enabling him to make frequent excur- 
sions over the avenues we have described ; 
whose attractions he very warmly acknowl- 
edged. But he very soon had companionship 
which doubled their charms. Twelve years 
before — in 1832 — when he was a law-student at 
Cambridge, he became thoroughly fascinated 
with the beauty and genius of Fanny Kemble, 
who, then twent5^-one years old — was making 
an American theatrical tour with her father. 
His personal acquaintance with her was, how- 
ever, of the slightest, until he came to Berk- 
shire. Naturally his first ride after getting 
settled in his Pittsfield resting-place was to visit 
his old bosom friends the Sedgwicks at Lenox ; 
and, with them, he found the lady of his old 
admiration, a dear, valued, and honored guest. 
It was a delightful surprise. 

Both had known much of life's changes in the 
interval between 1832 and 1844. Mr. Sumner, 
with a ripening intellect and a personnel vastly 
improved from that of the rather uncouth youth 
of his student life, had become a favorite in 
society, and had won a wider than national rep- 
utation as a writer upon law. Miss Kemble had 
become Mrs. Pierce Butler, and had suffered 
much in the unhappy marriage which was dis- 
solved the next year. Each was now thirty- 
three years old; of an age and with the finest 
capacities for the keenest enjoyment of noble 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. ^l 

scenery and the highest order of conversational 
intercourse. Neither was without sorrow ; but 
neither would submit to conquest by it. 

This combination of circumstances more than 
revived Mr. Sumner's fascination with the lady 
whose genius he had early learned to appreci- 
ate ; and she could not fail to be gratified by 
and reciprocate the admiration of a man whose 
opinions were authority in the highest intellect- 
ual circles of America, and were respected in 
corresponding circles of English life. That she 
did so, is proved by many expressions in her 
published writings, as well as by her conduct. 
Mr. Sumner's feeling toward her is illustrated 
by a passage in one of his letters. She had in- 
troduced the English sport of archery into 
Lenox summer-life, where we believe it still 
flourishes. Having written of a jolting ride 
with "Sam" Ward, one day, he continues: 
"Afterward we looked on while, in a field not 
far-off, the girls and others were engaged in the 
sport of archery. Mrs. Butler hit the target in 
the golden middle." Her triumph evidently 
pleased him. 

In anotlier letter he writes: "I count much 
upon the readings from Shakespeare, the con- 
versations and society of Fanny Kemble" (He 
restores here her maiden name), "who has 
promised to ride with me, and introduce me to 
the beautiful lanes and wild paths, of these 



42 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

mountains. She seems a noble woman — pecul- 
iar, bold, masculine, and unaccommodating; 
but having a burning sympathy with all that is 
high, true, and humane." 

The next day he wrote to his friend George 
S. Hillard, who accompained him to Pittsfield, 
but had returned: "I wish you were still here. 
Your presence would help me bear the weight 
of Fanny Kemble's conversation ; for much as 
I admire her, I confess to a certain awe and 
sense of her superiority which makes me at 
times anxious to subside into my own inferi- 
ority and leave the conversation to other minds. " 

Here is an account of a Sunday visit to 
Lenox : 

" I was perplexed whether to use Mr. New- 
ton's horse, as I presumed his owner never used 
him on Sunday, but my scruples gave way be- 
fore my longing for the best of exercises. I 
left Pittsfield as the first bell tolled for church 
and reached Lenox some time before the second 
bell. I sat in Mrs. [Charles] Sedgwick's room ; 
the time passed on. Mrs. Butler joined us; 
again time passed on. Mrs. Butler proposed to 
accompany me back to Pittsfield on horseback. 
I stayed to the cold dinner, making it lunch; 
again time passed on from delay in saddling the 
horses. We rode the longest way, and I en- 
joyed my companion much." 

The longest way was by the east road, which 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 43 

runs along the base of October Mountain, cross- 
ing Roaring Brook and the Housatonic River, 
whose serpentine course is here seen to great 
advantage. 

Toward the end of summer, Mr. Sumner 
wrote to Dr. Howe: " Hillard is here with me, 
and my situation is made most agreeable by the 
kindest hospitality. We took a drive the first 
day, to Lenox, where the Sedgwicks received 
me warmly, — somewhat as one risen from the 
dead. Next day, we made an excursion to 
Lanesboro, enjoying much the meadows, green 
fields, rich country, and beautiful scenery. I 
shall linger here another week." Accepting 
an invitation in this letter. Dr. Howe made a 
brief visit to the "House of the Old Clock." 
After his return Mr. Sumner wrote him on 
September 8: "Since you were here I have 
waxed in strength most visibly. To-day I rode 
two hours as the escort of two damsels of the 
place; one of them, the governor's daughter. 
Dr. Robert Campbell, a most respectable phy- 
sician of the place, called a few evenings since. 
He found my pulse 112, and said that its de- 
rangement was difficult to explain. He since 
met me in the street and volunteered to say 
that he had thought a great deal of my case, 
and was convinced that the derangement of my 
pulse was not to be referred to any organic dis- 
ease, but to some affection of the nerves; which 



44 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

is precisely my version of it. I am doing so 
well here, making such palpable progress, and 
friends are so kind, that I shall linger in Pitts- 
field or Lenox the greater part — perhaps all of 
next week; when I shall be very strong. 

Mr. Sumner's sanguine anticipations of 
restoration to perfect and permanent health by 
the aid of Berkshire air were fully realized; 
although something of the credit may be claimed 
for the very agreeable — not to say enchanting — 
circumstances under which he breathed it. 
This pleasant and interesting episode in the 
earlier life of the great orator and statesman is 
also a pleasant and interesting episode in the 
story of Pittsfield and Lenox life. We present 
the pictures of his rides and walks with the 
great actress and woman of genius, as charms 
wherewith those who follow in the scenes which 
delighted them may conjure up fantasies of 
delight for themselves. 

Longfellow fully shared Sumner's admiration 
for Fanny Kemble; and in neither did it fade 
with time. Both were in raptures with her 
Shakespearian readings. After one at Boston, 
in 1849, when Longfellow had recently returned 
from Pittsfield and Mrs. Kemble from Lenox, he 
wrote her a sonnet complimenting it as it de- 
served. "It pleased her much," and Sumner 
copied it for publication in the FA'enuig Tran- 
script : a pretty little incident of the beautiful 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 45 

friendships of the little group of great minds to 
which the poet and the orator belonged. 

In 1853 Nathan Appleton sold the House of 
the Old Clock to Thomas F. Plunkett, who 
made it his residence. But the " free-hearted 
hospitality" that "used to be," continued to be, 
and was enjoyed by the same class of guests. 
We can, however, mention only one; Dr. Josiah 
Gilbert Holland, editor, essayist, novelist, poet, 
and historian, who was for many 5^ears in many 
ways associated with Pittsfield from the time 
when he was a student in its medical college ; and 
whose careful and most appreciative biography 
was written by Mrs. H. M. Plunkett, the present 
mistress of the " Old House" of many memories. 

We may seem to have wandered far from our 
asserted theme; but we wish to remind the 
reader that the region which Dr. Holmes loved 
so well, and honored so much, that it can almost 
be called his own, had charms for other like 
minds. We would avoid leaving the impression 
that he was for Pittsfield the lone swallow that 
does not make a summer, whereas he was in 
fact the most tuneful, the most loving, and the 
most nearly native of many summer song-birds 
who have loved its haunts and left them melo- 
dious with the echoes of their praise: foremost 
also among the men of genius whose fame, 
mingling with the glory of its scenery, imparts 
to it a richer tinge. 



46 THE POET AMOXG THE HILLS. 

" I hope there will be luster enough in one or 
more of the names with which I shall gild my 
pages to redeem the dullness of all that is 
merely personal in my recollections." Dr. 
Holmes printed this in the introduction to one 
of his books. We have carefully examined the 
volume in question; and there is not in it the 
slightest particle of dullness to be redeemed. 
The sentence quoted is tlierefore entirely super- 
fluous. Being utterly useless to its author, and 
exactly adapted to our needs, we shall appro- 
priate and adopt it without scruple. By the 
way, it was quite a habit of Dr. Holmes to write 
that which his readers wished they had written 
themselves; it being just what they thought 
they had thought before. 

Dr. Holmes' verse, both in its sentiments and 
in his generous contributions of it to the town's 
great intellectual festivals, shows clearly his 
warm regard for Pittsfield; but yet stronger 
evidence that his love for the place was genuine 
and deep, is found in his private correspondence 
and public prose utterances. Of these we shall 
present some glowing words in their natural 
connections; but will here content ourselves 
with a single letter. It is not more emphatic 
or explicit than those to be quoted later; but 
we give it place here because it states concisely 
some points which introduce the writer as a 
Berkshire man, and prepare the way for much 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 47 

that is to follow. Dr. Holmes once said in 
Pittsfield that he was so fond of newspaper read- 
ing that he was obliged to systematically re- 
strict himself to a limited number in each class 
that he cared for. It was another proof of his 
kindly sympathies with our common humanity. 
It will be observed that, except "The Vision of 
the Housatonic River," every one of the poems 
in the present collection was first printed in a 
Pittsfield newspaper. This, to be sure, was be- 
cause they were included in reports of public 
occasions. Still as their author expressed sur- 
prise and pleasure on account of the accuracy of 
the work, the representatives of the local press 
will be apt to remember it. The letter which 
we quote was addressed to the Berkshire Press 
Club, declining an invitation to its annual din- 
ner in 1880. It is a good example of the court- 
esy with which Dr. Holmes uniformly softened 
such declinations when compelled to make 
them. Still his uniform utterances at every 
opportunity leave no doubt of the sincerity of 
what he wrote as to his relations with Pittsfield. 

"Boston, Oct. 16, 1880. 
" Gentlemen : — I thank you for your very kind 
invitation to enjoy a social evening with the 
Berkshire editors and reporters. Seven of the 
happiest summers of my life were passed in 
Berkshire with the Housatonic running through 



4S THE POET AMOXG THE HILLS. 

my meadows and Greylock looking into my 
study windows. It pleases me to know that I 
am not wholly forgotten in the flourishing town 
and almost city of Pittsfield, to which my great- 
grandfather (Col. Jacob Wendell) rode, on 
horseback through the woods, when it was an 
Indian settlement or camp. 

" I regret very much that it is not in my 
power to be with you at the American House; 
but no outside guest can be missed at a meeting 
enlivened by the wit and talent sure to be seated 
at a board surrounded by editors and reporters. 
" I am, etc. , 

"O. W. Holmes." 



II. 

BERKSHIRE JUBILEE SPEECH AND POEM. 

Sketch of the Jubilee — The Dinner — David Dudley 
Field's Journey of a Day — Catherine Sedgwick's 
Chronicles— Dr. Holmes' Table Speech — His Poem 
of Welcome. 

Something of Oliver Wendell Holmes' rela- 
tion to Pittsfield and Berkshire is intimated in 
the letter with which our prologue closes; but 
his affiliation with the town will appear more 
definitely as we proceed; still using his own 
words as a basis and guide. And we begin 
with those spoken at the Berkshire Jubilee of 
1844. The Berkshire Jubilee: — Fifty years ago 
that name would have needed no interpreta- 
tion in a connection like this. The unique 
character of the festival, the many famous par- 
ticipants in it, and the great number of the 
mountain county's sons and daughters who 
flocked to it from homes in all sections of the 
Union, secured liberal reports of, and comments 
upon, its proceedings in all considerable Amer- 
ican journals. But all things are food for 
edacious Time; and even a little half-century 
4 49 



50 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

is a ravenous devoiirer of newspaper fame. The 
story of the Jubilee is still locally extant; but 
even at home, although a little revived by the 
recurrence of its fiftieth anniversary, it begins 
to take on the phantom -like obscurity of tra- 
dition. Elsewhere, now and then, a minute 
biographer alludes to it in his memoir of some 
prominent actor in it; taking good care to pro- 
vide an explanatory foot-note, or its equivalent. 
Yet it was a right memorable occasion ; and one 
that deserves a permanent record. That its 
name and some hint of its character will be pre- 
served is made sure by the inclusion of Dr. 
Holmes' poem of welcome to it in the perma- 
nent collection of his works; but even there it 
calls for the annotation we are to give it here. 

The Jubilee. 

For some years previous to 1844, Rev. Rus- 
sell S. Cook, of New York, a native of New 
Marlboro, a resident of Lenox in his youth, and 
a frequent loving visitor to it in his mature life, 
was secretary of the American Tract Society. 
His official duties called him to all sections of 
the country; and everywhere he found Berk- 
shire men in respectable, and often in high, 
positions. Impressed by the spontaneous ex- 
pressions of warm regard for their old mountain 
homes by those whom he earliest met, further 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 51 

inquiry wherever he went convinced him that 
this feeling was uniform and universal. 

From these and cognate observations, Mr. 
Cook conceived the idea of bringing these emi- 
grants together in a social reunion at some 
convenient central point in Berkshire, with a 
view to forming a band of union among them ; 
awakening in the citizens of the county an in- 
terest in the fame and usefulness of those who 
had gone out from among them, and also of 
furnishing to the world an illustration of the 
influence New England was having in the for- 
mation of the character of the country. Mr, 
Cook suggested this idea from time to time in 
his official visits, and found it everywhere cor- 
dially approved; but its realization was post- 
poned, awaiting the recovery of the country 
from the financial depression of 1837 ; and prob- 
ably, also, the completion of the Western (now 
the Boston and Albany) Railroad to Pittsfield, 
which did not happen until the late fall of 1842. 
In the spring of 1843, Mr. Cook, incidentally 
meeting Judge Joshua A. Spencer, of Utica, a 
native of Great Barrington, broached the sub- 
ject to him. The judge heartily concurred in 
his idea, and the two gentlemen agreed upon a 
plan which was afterward substantially carried 
out. Both were men of influence personally, as 
well as from their official positions. Leading 
New York newspapers gave their earnest assist- 



52 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

ance, the name " Berkshire Jubilee" being first 
printed in the Journal of Commerce, whose editor, 
Colonel Stone, was foremost in his helpfulness. 
There was no difficulty in organizing a " New 
York Committee" zealous for the proposed re- 
union, with names upon it fit to conjure with: 
such as William Cullen Bryant, Orville Dewey, 
Judge Samuel R. Betts, David Dudley Field, 
Theodore Sedgwick, Marshall S. Bidwell, and 
Drake Mills. This committee communicated 
with gentlemen in Pittsfield, where, and in the 
county, committees were formed for the local 
work. 

Then all went swimmingly. It was deter- 
mined to hold the Jubilee at Pittsfield, August 
22 and 23, 1844. The program called for a ser- 
mon and historical poem on the first day, an 
oration in the forenoon and a dinner in the 
afternoon of the second: all preceded by formal 
and informal welcomes and greetings, which 
proved to be warm and heartfelt, and inter- 
spersed with poems, hymns, and other minor 
exercises, some of which were of very marked 
character; such as an essay upon the then re- 
cently deceased William Ellery Channing by 
his friend Miss Sedgwick, and an ode on Berk- 
shire by Mrs. Frances Ann (Fanny) Kemble. 

Near the Pittsfield Union Railroad passenger 
station — which indeed stands on the edge of its 
southern slope — there rises the most conspicuous 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 53 

natural elevation in the township, save its very 
narrow mountain borders. It is almost two 
hundred rods long and forty wide, and its sum- 
mit is about sixty feet above the mean level of 
the city streets. It was originally the farm of 
Dr. Timothy Childs, one of the most honored 
of Pittsfield's Revolutionary patriots; and, al- 
though it is now covered with fine streets and 
avenues, in 1844 there was no house upon it 
except the homestead which he built, and in 
his lifetime occupied. Thus it commanded an 
entirely unobstructed view of the noble valley, 
with ever-majestic Greylock looking down upon 
it from the north, and the graceful triune Lenox 
Range, with Yocun's Seat, its loftiest peak, not 
far away on the south. The Housatonic flowed 
along its western base, and the village lay smil- 
ing on the east. 

All its memories and features marked this 
fair hill as the proper spot for most of the exer- 
cises of the Jubilee; and a platform was erected 
near the southern extremity of its summit upon 
which it was planned to conduct all, except the 
receptions and the dinner. But, when the peo- 
ple had assembled for the sermon, a violent 
rain-storm drove them, " in most admired dis- 
order," from the hill to the time-honored, fairly 
handsome and spacious Congregationar church. 
There the sermon was preached by that most 
eminent educator, metaphysician, and pulpit 



54 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

orator, President Mark Hopkins of Williams 
College. Dr. Hopkins has been happily char- 
acterized as " massive-minded ;'* and his Jubilee 
sermon was what was to be expected from such 
a preacher. But he was also a true son of one 
of the most Berkshire of all old Berkshire fami- 
lies. He dearly loved the scenery which had 
delighted him from childhood, and he was proud 
of the history in whose glories he had good right 
to share. He knew well how to prize all that 
went to make up the grand mountain-walled 
individuality which peculiarly characterizes the 
county. Naturally inspired by an occasion 
which kindled and concentrated thought of all 
this, many poetic passages glowed, like Alpine 
roses, among his massive sentences. 

A poem by Rev. Dr. William Allen, of 
Northampton, ex-president of Bowdoin Col- 
lege, followed the sermon, and, if not such 
poetry as Bryant would have discoursed, it was 
excellent local history and topography, and well 
fitted to stimulate and gratify local pride. Dr. 
Allen was a scholar and biographical writer of 
decided merit; but his special claim to the 
position assigned him at the Jubilee was that 
he was a son of Rev. Thomas Allen, the first 
minister of Pittsfield and the " Fighting Parson 
of Bennington Field;" and that, succeeding his 
father in 1811, he had preached six years in 
the pulpit from which he read his poem ; so that 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 55 

he might well have been regarded as a connect- 
ing link between the Berkshire men of the 
Revolution and those of the Jubilee time. 

The oration on the second day, by Judge 
Joshua A. Spencer, was a terse resume oi Berk- 
shire history, told with grace and spirit. 
Nature, grown more kindly, permitted it to be 
delivered, with other interesting exercises, from 
the platform on the hill. Up to this time this 
hill had been known simply as the " Childs 
Farm." But Rev. Dr. John Todd, the chair- 
man of the Pittsfield committee, in his farewell 
address at the close of the Jubilee, in the din- 
ner pavilion, said: 

"We have been thinking how we could erect 
some monument of this Jubilee. In our wis- 
dom we have spoken of several; but, after all, 
God has been before us; and his mighty hand 
hath reared the monument. That hill from 
which we came to this pavilion will hereafter 
bear the name of Jubilee Hill; and when our 
heads are laid in the grave, and we have passed 
away, and are forgotten, we hope that our chil- 
dren and our children's children will walk over 
that beautiful spot, and say, 'Here our fathers 
celebrated the Berkshire Jubilee. ' This monu- 
ment shall stand as long as the footstool of God 
shall remain." 

The great assemblage gave a ringing response 
to these words; and the name was fixed forever. 



56 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 



The Jubilee Dinner. 

The successive parts of the Jubilee were re- 
markably well balanced; but the dinner was 
singularly memorable: the intellectual portion 
being an expansion of the thought and concen- 
trated essence of the feeling which marked the 
preceding demonstration. Its story is certainly 
pertinent to our present essay, as Dr. Holmes 
was a conspicuous figure in it. 

The main streets of Pittsfield that run north 
and south are, for some three-quarters of a mile, 
bordered by plains. Near the northern end of 
this distance there was in 1812 a large, perfectly 
level, open field. This attracted the attention 
of Maj.-Gen. H. A. S. Dearborn, who was or- 
ganizing the Northern Military Department for 
the war that was just commencing; and he 
selected it as a site for a cantonment — a post of 
rendezvous, organization, and training for regi- 
ments raised in New England, and for the con- 
finement of prisoners of war. Pittsfield had 
been chosen for the cantonment on account of its 
defensible position among the hills: a protec- 
tion for which, at the Jubilee, years afterward, 
the assembled people returned thanks by sing- 
ing with enthusiasm Mrs. Hemans' " Hymn of 
the Mountain Christians," of which we quote 
one verse : 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 57 

"For the strength of the hills, we bless thee, 

Our God, our fathers' God. 
Thou hast made thy children mighty 

By the touch of the mountain sod. 
Thou hast fixed our ark of refuge 

Where the spoiler's foot ne'er trod ; 
For the strength of the hills we bless thee, 

Our God, our fathers' God." 

Barracks were erected for the cantonment and 
occupied by many of the soldiers who won 
honor in the northern campaigns, and by more 
than two thousand of the prisoners captured by 
them ; the privates among the latter seeming 
to enjoy their captivity better than campaigning. 

When the war was over the barracks gave 
place to three large buildings erected for the 
Berkshire Gymnasium, a high school for young 
men, founded on a peculiar German model by 
Professor Chester Dewey, one of the foremost 
American men of science of his time, and one 
who did a great work as a pioneer in the study 
of Western Massachusetts geology, mineralogy, 
and natural history generally. Professor Dewey 
having discontinued the gymnasium, to accept 
a professorship in the Rochester University, the 
buildings were occupied in 1844 by the Pitts- 
field Young Ladies' Institute, which, although 
recently founded, had already attained a national 
standing. Before these buildings, a pavilion for 
the Jubilee dinner was erected, in which tables 
were spread for a thousand guests. 



58 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

The president of the day was George N. 
Briggs, who was then serving the first of seven 
terms as Governor of the Commonwealth after 
six in Congress: an admirable selection, not 
solely because Governor Briggs was the most 
eminent citizen of the town and county in official 
rank ; but because he was unsurpassed in quali- 
fications to preside at a festal table like this: 
never-failing tact, self-possession, and knowl- 
edge of men, ready and never misplaced wit 
and humor, wonderful familiarity with Berk- 
shire character, history, tradition, and anecdote, 
together with the happiest faculty for making 
use of his local lore. 

Some thirty sons of Berkshire responded to 
the president's call for short speeches or " sen- 
timents;" all of them men of note in their sev- 
eral homes, and some of wider fame. Among 
them, besides several who have been named in 
other connections, were President Heman 
Humphrey of Amherst College — who before 
and after that presidency was an intense and 
ardent Pittsfield man — Rev. Drs. Orville and 
Chester Dewey, Theodore Sedgwick, of New 
York and Stockbridge; John Mills, of Spring- 
field, and Julius Rockwell, the successor of 
Governor Briggs in Congress, An interesting 
speaker was Rev. Joshua Noble Danforth, of 
Alexandria, Virginia, a son of Pittsfield's Rev- 
olutionary hero, Col. Joshua Danforth; who 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 59 

said : " We stand here to-day, forty in relation- 
ship — twenty-five of us the direct descendants 
of David Noble of Williamstown — the upright 
judge, the exemplary Christian." 

A peculiarly pleasant and striking incident of 
the day was the speech and the reading of 
Leigh Hunt's poem, " Abou Ben Adhem," by 
William Charles Macready, the distinguished 
English tragedian ; which, with Mrs. Kemble's 
grand Berkshire ode, made a contribution to the 
occasion from the British stage that was little to 
be expected. 

Another pleasant and notable feature was the 
presence of Rev. Dr. David Dudley Field, of 
Stockbridge, the first historian of Berkshire 
County, with two of his famous sons, David 
Dudley and Cyrus W. Naturally the great law- 
yer was the spokesman of the family: but it 
is not for that we now specially recall him. 
In President Hopkins' sermon there occurred 
the following passage: "Probably most of us 
have read— for it was in an old New England 
school-book — of that 'Journey of a Day' that 
was a picture of human life. And, if it were 
given us to make the journey of a day that 
should be, not in its events, but in its scenery, 
the picture of our lives, where should we rather 
choose to make it than through the length of 
our Berkshire? What could be better than to 
watch the rising of the sun from the top of 



6o THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

Greylock, and his setting from the Eagle's 
Nest?" 

" This passage so fastened itself on Mr. Field's 
mind" that he followed its suggestions, the very 
next week; and his spirited account of the ex- 
perience the excursion brought him was widely 
published in the journals of the time under the 
title of "A Journey of a Day," and is repro- 
duced in the recent superb edition of his writ- 
ings. " The entire length of the county" — he 
wrote— "from north to south is fifty miles; and 
if the ascent of Greylock is made the evening 
before, so that the journey may begin at sunrise, 
it is possible in thirteen hours to pass down the 
valley, ascend the Dome of the Taconics, and 
get a last view of the setting sun from the 
Eagle's Nest. " This he accomplished: passing 
through Williamstown, New Ashford, Lanes- 
boro, Pittsfield, Lenox, Stockbridge, Great Har- 
rington ; and, over the Dome of the Taconics 
in Egremont, into the wild, awe-inspiring gorge 
of the far-famed Bash-Bish Falls in the western 
side of Mount Washington, where, among the 
other almost Alpine features, a vast vtrall of rock 
rises two hundred feet, beetling twenty-five feet 
beyond its base at its top; the Eagle's Nest, 
from which Mr. Field and his companion had a 
glorious view of the setting sun ; Greylock, 
Williamstown, Lanesboro, Pittsfield, Lenox, 
Stockbridge, Great Barrington, the Dome, and 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 6i 

the Eagle's Nest: what a carcanet of golden 
landscapes jeweled with precious memories 
these names call to mind! And to each and all 
the great jurist dealt poetic justice, both as to 
scenery and to story. We can, however, only 
quote his words regarding the Jubilee, and so 
much of those concerning Pittsfield as relate to 
the town as its seat. 

Arriving at Pontoosuc Lake, which he locates 
in Lanesboro, although half its surface is in 
Pittsfield, Mr. Field writes: 

" One feature of uncommon beauty, the place 
[Lanesboro'] has: its Pontoosuc Lake, or 
Shoonke Moonke, as it is sometimes called. It 
covers six hundred acres; and its bright waters, 
the road along its margin, and the tall trees that 
shade it make you sorry to leave it. We could 
not stay, but hurried on to Pittsfield. What 
shall we say of Pittsfield; the hospitable, the 
beautiful? Just fresh from the Jubilee — fresh 
from the open houses and the open hearts of 
her people — we drove into the village, with the 
scenes of those two days fresh in our vision. 
The intervening week had vanished. We stood 
again on Jubilee Hill ; we went down to the field 
where the feast was spread; we laughed under 
the Old Elm; we saw our friends — our fellows; 
as goodly a company as we shall see again for 
many a day. Truly it was a high festival: one 
worthy to be commemorated — to be repeated." 



62 THE POET AMOXG THE HILLS. 

" The valley of the Housatonic here widens 
to its greatest breadth. Poontoosuck, the In- 
dian name (pity it was not retained) signifies 
'a field for the deer.' Pleasant place for hunt- 
ing the Indians must have found it; and pleas- 
ant, too, for sojourn it is for the white man." 

We must content us with one more contem- 
porary description of the Jubilee; or a portion 
of one. It is from the pen of Catherine Sedg- 
wick — there could be no better representatives 
of the people of southern Berkshire at the Jubi- 
lee, and of their feeling regarding it than Dud- 
ley Field and Catherine Sedgwick. An official 
report of the proceedings on the two days of the 
festival was published in an octavo volume, and 
Miss Sedgwick contributed to it a five-page 
resume of the story, written in the Hebraic 
manner. We quote a few of the more detach- 
able verses. 



" Hath not the Lord given us rest on every 
side! Now we will proclaim a Jubilee, — We 
will go up to our Jerusalem! We will worship 
in the temples of our fathers. We will kiss the 
sod that covers the graves of our kindred; and 
we will sit ourselves down in the old places 
where their shadows will pass before us! 

"We will rejoice and make merry with our 
brethren ; and Alemory and Hope shall be our 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 63 

pleasant ministers. And we will lay our hearts 
together, and stir up the smouldering embers 
of old friendships till the fire burns within us: 
and this, even this sacred fire, will we transmit 
to our children's children. 

"And even as they said, so did they; and in 
the summer solstice, with one heart and one 
mind, did they come together: the Pilgrims 
from afar and the Sojourners at home. Even 
from the valley of the Mississippi came they; 
and from the yet farther country of the Mis- 
souri, and from the Land of the Sun, even from 
the Southland; and from all the goodly lands 
about Massachusetts. 



" And they gathered together, a multitude of 
people, old men and elder women, young men 
and fair young maidens, and much children — a 
very great company were they. 

" And a great heart was in the people of Pitts- 
field ; and they opened the doors of their pleas- 
ant dwellings and bade their brethren enter 
therein. And they spread fine linen on their 
beds, and they covered their tables with the fat 
of the land; for the Lord had greatly blessed 
the people of Pittsfield. 

" And they said to all their brethren : Come 
now and enter in and freely take of our abun- 
dance; for, lo, have we not spread our tables 



64 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

for you, and hath not the angel of sleep dressed 
our beds, that our brethren may sleep therein? 

" And the faces of their brethren shone, and 
they entered in ; and they said : It was a true 
report we heard of thee; thy land doth excel, 
and thou hast greatly increased the riches and 
the beauty thereof." 

Such was the occasion on which Oliver Wen- 
dell Holmes first addressed a Berkshire audi- 
ence; and such were the men and women 
associated with him in it. 

Dr. Holmes' Speech and Poem. 

Governor Briggs having made a cordial, in- 
teresting, and appropriate speech of welcome, 
to which Judge Betts responded in the same 
vein, the governor announced a poem by Dr. 
Holmes. The poet was already not unknown 
to fame, although very far from that which 
afterward celebrated his name; and its an- 
nouncement was received with ringing cheers 
and cries of "Come forward!" The president 
suggested that he should rather follow the ex- 
ample of Judge Betts, and mount the table: 
remarking that this would be an advance on 
some old-fashioned feasts, where the tendency 
was rather to get under the table than upon it. 
Dr. Holmes followed this advice and took the 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 65 

table: and when the renewed cheers subsided 
read the following speech and poem. 

He asked to be allowed, before he opened 
the paper in his hand, to assure his friends of 
the reason why he found himself there. He 
said: 

" Inasmuch as the company express willing- 
ness to hear historical incidents, any little inci- 
dent which shall connect me with those to whom 
I cannot claim to be a brother, seems to be fairly 
brought forward. One of my earliest recollec- 
tions is of an annual pilgrimage made by my 
parents to the west. The young horse was 
brought up, fatted by a week's rest and high 
feeding, prancing and caracoling to the door. 
It came to the corner and was soon over the 
western hills. He was gone a fortnight; and 
one afternoon — it always seems to me it was a 
sunny afternoon — we saw an equipage crawl- 
ing from the west toward the old homestead; 
the young horse, who set out fat and prancing, 
worn thin and reduced by a long journey — the 
chaise covered with dust, and all speaking of 
a terrible crusade, a formidable pilgrimage. 
Winter-evening stories told me where — to Berk- 
shire, to the borders of New York, to the old 
domain, owned so long that there seemed a kind 
of hereditary love for it. Many years passed 
away, and I traveled down the beautiful Rhine. 
I wished to see the equally beautiful Hudson. 
5 



66 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

I found myself at Albany; a few hours' ride 
brought me to Pittsfield, and I went to the lit- 
tle spot, the scene of this pilgrimage — a man- 
sion — and found it surrounded by a beautiful 
meadow, through which the winding river made 
its course in a thousand fantastic curves; the 
mountains reared their heads around it, the 
blue air which makes our city-pale cheeks again 
to deepen with the hue of health, coursing about 
it pure and free. I recognized it as the scene 
of the annual pilgrimage. Since then I have 
made an annual visit to it. 

"In 1735, Hon. Jacob Wendell, my grandfa- 
ther in the maternal line, bought a township not 
then laid out — the township of Poontoosuck — 
and that little spot which we still hold is the relic 
of twenty-four thousand acres of baronial terri- 
tory. When I say this, no feeling which can 
be the subject of ridicule animates my bosom. 
I know too well that the hills and rocks outlast 
our families. I know we fall upon the places 
we claim, as the leaves of the forest fall, and as 
passed the soil from the hands of the original 
'occupants into the hands of my immediate an- 
cestors, I know it must pass from me and mine; 
and yet with pleasure and pride I feel I can take 
every inhabitant by the hand and say, If I am 
not a son or a grandson, or even a nephew of 
this fair county, I am at least allied to it by 
hereditary relation." 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 67 



Poem of Welcome. 

Come back to your Mother, ye children, for shame, 
Who have wandered like truants, for riches or fame ! 
With a smile on her face and a sprig on her cap, 
She calls you to feast from her bountiful lap. 

Come out from your alleys, your courts and yoxxx lanes. 
And breathe, like young eagles, the air of our plains : 
Take a whiff from our fields, and your excellent wives 
Will declare it's all nonsense insuring your lives. 

Come you of the law, who can talk if you please 
Till the man in the moon will allow it's a cheese. 
And leave "the old lady, that never tells lies," 
To sleep with her handkerchief over her eyes. 

Ye healers of men, for a moment decline 

Your feats in the rhubarb and ipecac line ; 

While you shut up your turnpike, your neighbors can go 

The old roundabout road to the regions below. 

You clerk, on whose ears are a couple of pens, 
And whose head is an ant-hill of units and tens; 
Though Plato denies you, we welcome you still 
As a featherless biped, in spite of your quill. 

Poor drudge of the city, how happy he feels 

With the burs on his legs and the grass at his heels ; 

No dodger behind, his bandanas to share. 

No constable grumbling "You mustn't walk there." 

In yonder green meadow\ to memory dear, 

He slaps a mosquito and brushes a tear ; 

The dew-drops hang round him on blossoms and shoots, 

He breathes but one sigh for his youth and his boots. 



68 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

There stands the old school-house, hard by the old 

church ; 
That tree at its side had the flavor of birch ; 
Oh sweet were the days of his juvenile tricks, 
Though the prairie of youth had so many "big licks." 

By the side of yon river he weeps and he slumps, 
His boots filled with water as if they were pumps ; 
Till, sated with rapture, he steals to his bed, 
With a glow in his heart and a cold in his head, 

'Tis past— he is dreaming— I see him again ; 
His ledger returns as by legerdemain ; 
His neck-cloth is damp, with an easterly flaw, 
And he holds in his fingers an omnibus straw. 

He dreams the shrill gust is a blossomy gale, 
That the straw is a rose from his dear native vale ; 
And murmurs, unconscious of space and of time, 
"A I, Extra-super— Oh. isn't it Prime!" 

Oh. what are the prizes we perish to win, 

To the first little "shiner" we caught with a pin ! 

No soil upon earth is as dear to our eyes 

As the soil we first stirred in terrestrial pies ! 

Then come from all parties, and parts, to our feast. 
Though not at the "Astor," we'll give you at least 
A bite at an apple, a seat on the grass, 
And the best of cold— water— at nothing a glass. 



II. 

THE WENDELL FAMILY. 

Jacob Wendell in Boston— Connection with Old Boston 
Families — Buys Township now Pittsfield— His De- 
scendants—Holmes' Genealogy— Phillips' Geneal- 
ogy—Wendell Phillips— Oliver Wendell in Pittsfield 
—Curious Incidents— Oliver Wendell Fierce for 
Moderation— Friendship with the Van Schaacks. 

Dr. Holmes' reference in his Jubilee speech 
to his great-grandfather's, Col. Jacob Wendell's, 
early property in the township of Poontoosuck 
was all that the occasion demanded ; or at least 
all that the brevity in speeches enjoined by the 
president permitted ; as, with his usual courtesy 
for those who were to follow him, he declined to 
avail himself of the evident general desire of his 
listeners to waive the rule of limitation in his 
behalf. Still something more in detail and 
more precise than family tradition -will have 
interest for many readers. 

Jacob Wendell was born at Albany, in 1691, 

of good old Holland lineage. About the year 

1720 he removed to Boston, where he prospered, 

becoming a wealthy merchant, an influential 

69 



70 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

citizen, a member of the Provincial Council, 
and, besides other important civil offices, colo- 
nel of the local militia regiment. He held this 
command in 1744, when Boston greatly dreaded 
invasion by a French naval armament, and was 
one of seven magnates who demanded a town 
meeting to " consider steps for the better pro- 
tection of the town and its approaches." The 
steps were taken, and in 1745, when Governor 
Shirley, returning in triumph after the capture 
of Louisburgh, landed at "the castle" from the 
frigate " Massachusetts," he was met by Colonel 
Wendell's regiment and Colonel Pollard's Ca- 
dets, and escorted into town amid the un- 
bounded enthusiastic demonstrations of the 
people ; the day being " given up to jollifica- 
tion." Afterward Colonel Wendell was com- 
mander of the " Ancient and Honorable Artillery 
Company. " His residence in Boston was a brick 
mansion, notable for its time, on the corner of 
Tremont and School streets, opposite to that 
on which King's Chapel was built in 1749. 

Soon after Colonel Wendell began business 
in Boston there sprang up something very like 
a western fever for speculation in the unappro- 
priated lands in the county of Hampshire, which 
then included the present Hampshire, Berk- 
shire, Hampden, and Franklin. In 1735 the 
General Court granted three townships of these 
lands, each six miles square, to the town of 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 71 

Boston, in consideration for its heavy expendi- 
tures for free schools and the support of its 
poor; and also because it paid one-fifth of the 
entire annual tax of the Province. 

Certain not very light conditions v/ere at- 
tached to this grant, and three members of the 
Council and four of the House were appointed 
a commission to see that they were faithfully 
complied with. Colonel Wendell was one of 
the commissioners, and in 1736 he bought at 
auction the inchoate right to one of these town- 
ships, which, when selected and the title to it 
duly confirmed, was Poontoosuck. It the nap- 
peared that Colonel Wendell had bought as well 
for his kinsman, Edward Livingston, of Albany, 
as for himself. It was also found that Col. 
John Stoddard, of Northampton, had a prior 
grant of 1,000 acres of the best uplands, and had 
also purchased the Indian title to a tract in 
which the whole township was included. Cir- 
cumstances had made Colonels Wendell and 
Stoddard thoroughly and personally familiar 
with the whole region to which their choice was 
confined,* and all the grantees knew well all 
that in forest days could be known of the region 
which lay in and around the spot which is now 

*The Upper and Lower Housatonic townships, em- 
bracing what are now the towns of Sheffield and Great 
Barrington and the township now Stockbridge and 
West Stockbridge, had already been appropriated. 



72 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

Pittsfield, as it has been described to the reader. 
And they were so well satisfied with it that, 
wise men as they were, they preferred, rather 
than to make a new selection, to compromise 
upon a joint and equal undivided ownership. 

The French and Indian wars defeated for years 
their repeated earnest efforts to effect a settle- 
ment of the township, and none was made until 
1752. But, in accordance with the terms of the 
grant, sixty-three one-hundred-acre settling lots 
were in 1738 laid out in a central portion of the 
township, in a compact form. These were in 
due time disposed of in one way or another. 

The remainder of the 24,040 acres, which was 
the exact measurement of the grant, was held in 
common until January, 1760; a division in 1752 
having, in 1754, on an appeal by Colonel Wen- 
dell, been set aside by a competent court as 
improperly made. The abrogated division was 
made on a petition from Capt. Charles Goodrich, 
to whom Colonel Wendell had sold an tmdivided 
third part of his interest in the "commons." 
Livingston, in 1743, sold his entire interest to a 
syndicate of prominent western Massachusetts 
citizens for ^3,000. Colonel Stoddard died in 
1 748, leaving his Poontoosuck lands to his widow 
and his sons, Israel and Solomon, all afterward 
residents of note in Pittsfield. Such was the 
ownership of the " commons" lands when in 
January, 1760, a competent and scrupulously 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 73 

impartial commission, appointed by the court 
with the approval of all concerned, rendered a 
satisfactory report apportioning them to the 
proprietors in severalty. It divided the lands 
into squares, averaging about three hundred 
acres in size ; and carefully classed them as first, 
second, and third rate in quality. These squares 
were distributed among the owners to whom 
they were respectively assigned, not contigu- 
ously, but intermixed all over the township. 
Colonel Wendell received twenty-two, and 
chance seems to have favored him in the natu- 
ral beauty of some of them. All of the north 
and west shores of Lake Onota fell to him, and 
also Square No. 5, afterward the farm of the 
Revolutionary hero, Israel Dickinson ; and later 
the park-like estate attached to the summer resi- 
dence of Judge Benjamin R. Curtis. Its next 
owner, Hon. Ensign H. Kellogg, gave it the 
name of Morningside, which is now familiar as 
that of a busy and populous section of the city. 
The acquisition that Colonel Wendell most 
prized, and which is also of most interest to us 
in the present connection, was that comprised in 
Squares 56 and 57, which included the Canoe 
Meadows. In a plot of the township which 
must have been a Wendell family paper, there 
is written across the location of these squares 
this minute: "Colonel Wendell's meadow in- 
cluded in these two lots; chiefly valuable." 



74 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

The old Wendells appreciated this feature, as 
Dr. Holmes did when he built his summer villa 
on Square 56, to overlook the meadows and the 
Housatonic flowing through them. 

Both Colonel Stoddard and Colonel Wendell 
plainly looked upon their Poontoosuck purchase 
in a different light from that in which they 
viewed other places in which they owned lands. 
" The Great New Englander" died before settle- 
ment there was practicable; but it was in ac- 
cordance with his wish that his widow and sons 
made it their home. In some early archives 
the inchoate town is styled Wendellstown, and 
Colonel Wendell manifested his kindly feeling 
toward it in many ways, as many of his descen- 
dants have done; among them Dr. Holmes and 
Wendell Phillips — whose lines of descent we 
will trace in outline. 



Some of Colonel Wendell's Descendants. 

Jacob Wendell was born, in 1691, at Albany. 
His father, John Wendell, died while he was an 
infant, and in 1695 his widowed mother mar- 
ried Capt. John Schuyler. Her maiden name 
was Elizabeth Staats, and Jacob was named for 
her brother, Jacob Staats, who was one of the 
sponsors at his christening in the old Dutch 
church. Not long after his removal to Boston, 
he married Sarah, daughter of Dr. James Oliver, 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 75 

"a famous physician who graduated at Harvard 
in 1680 and died in 1703." Several descendants 
of this marriage have made their mark in the 
political, literary, and legal history of Massa- 
chusetts ; prominently among them Judge Oliver 
Wendell, Oliver Wendell Holmes and his son, 
the present Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes ; John 
Phillips, the first Mayor of Boston, and his son 
Wendell Phillips. 

It w^ould bewilder any but the best-trained 
genealogist even to attempt arranging the web 
of direct and collateral relationships with the 
Hutchinsons, the Olivers, the Brattles, and other 
provincial Boston gentry into which Colonel 
Wendell's marriage introduced Dr. Holmes' 
ancestry; to say nothing about interweaving it 
with the vSchuylers, Livingstons, and others of 
like degree in old Dutch rank, with whom His- 
torian Henry C. Van Schaack affiliates the 
Wendells. It has been said that the poet was 
very proud of his descent, and that this pride 
colored both his life and many of his literary 
productions. It may have manifested itself in 
his Berkshire, as in his Boston, social life: but 
we scrupulously avoid obtruding upon either. 
In his relations to the Berkshire public and in 
his Berkshire poems, there is, however, nothing 
in the slightest degree to indicate ancestral 
pride, except the noblesse oblige which governed 
him everywhere and always; unless his natural 



76 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

and necessary allusions to Colonel Wendell in 
his Jubilee address and in some letters may be 
counted as such an indication. We wiH there- 
fore only state, and that briefly, the lines of 
descent from Colonel Wendell, of Dr. Holmes 
and Wendell Phillips; adding the latter because 
the two cousins expressed a like interest in 
Pittsfield on account of their common ancestor's 
relations to it ; and also because, wide apart as 
the political agitations of the country during 
their middle life drifted them, they always had 
a true, kindly, cousinly pride in each other's 
genius and fame.* 

The Holmes Genealogy. — The youngest child of 
Jacob and Sarah [Oliver] Wendell was Oliver 
Wendell, who was born in 1734. He married 
Mary, daughter of Edward Jackson. Their 
daughter, Sarah, married Rev. Abiel Holmes, 
of Cambridge, a theological and historical 

* We believe this to be true of Dr. Holmes; and we 
know it to be so of Mr. Phillips, as frequent conversa- 
tions with him concerning the genealogy and history of 
the Wendell family gave us opportunity to learn. Mr. 
Phillips had a decided natural love for historical and 
genealogical studies, and had net duty called him to 
another field might have become the great historian of 
Massachusetts who is still to come. He once, with 
evident feeling, showed the present writer a handsome 
volume, compiled, if memory serves us correctly, by him- 
self ; which gave an account of those of his ancestors 
who are buried in the King's Chapel burial-ground. 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 77 

writer of note ; and became the mother of Oliver 
Wendell Holmes. 

The Phillips Genealogy. — Margaret, one of Colo- 
nel Wendell's daughters, married William Phil- 
lips, a member of an old and distinguished 
family and himself lieutenant-governor of 
Massachusetts. Their son, John, who, in 1822, 
was elected the first mayor of Boston, married 
Sarah Whalley, and became the father of Wen- 
dell Phillips. 

After Colonel Wendell's death his lands in 
Pittsfield were divided among his heirs, and the 
squares assigned to each respectively are desig- 
nated, on the chart before mentioned, by ini- 
tials. Square 56, on which Dr. Holmes built 
his villa, fell to Oliver Wendell and his brother, 
John Mico, who also received several other 
squares; some jointly, some severally. John 
Mico Wendell married Catherine Brattle, a de- 
scendant of Thomas Brattle, the founder of the 
distinguished Boston family of that name; and 
some of his Pittsfield land, in one way or an- 
other, passed into the hands of one of its cadets, 
who settled upon it; thus planting a branch of 
it in the town, where it still has representatives. 
Both the wife and mother of John Mico Wen- 
dell were descendants of Governors Dudley and 
Bradstreet. In 1791, Oliver Wendell, Cather- 
ine Wendell, Margaret Phillips (grandmother 
of Wendell Phillips) and other heirs of the first 



78 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

owner of the township, still retained 1,200 of its 
24,000 acres and were taxed ^4 toward the 
building in that year of the town's second meet- 
ing-house: the same in which, fifty-eight years 
afterward, Dr. Holmes read his famous cattle- 
show poem, "The Ploughman." 

Oliver Wendell was, as a summer resident 
and owner of real estate in Pittsfield, more 
closely identified with its general affairs than 
any other member of the Wendell family ; Dr. 
Holmes' relations to it being, except in the 
ownership of his country-seat, purely of a liter- 
ary character. As to Oliver Wendell's life in 
his ordinary home: Born at Boston in 1734, 
and graduating from Harvard at the age of 
nineteen, he followed in the footsteps of his 
father as a merchant; and in 1783 was one of 
the founders and directors of the Massachusetts 
Bank, the first institution of the kind in New 
England. He was representative from Boston 
in 1771-72 ; selectman in 1733-34 ; and a delegate 
to the Provincial Congresses of 1775 and 1776, 
some of the other members of the delegation 
being John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Gen. 
Joseph Warren. After the Revolution he was 
for several years one of the Executive Council 
of the Commonwealth, and for many judge of 
probate for Suffolk County, and a trustee of 
Harvard College. 

During the Revolution, and in preparation 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 



70 



for it, he was prominent as an active and influ- 
ential Whig : so much so that local tradition has 
it that early in the great struggle he came to 
Pittsfield, and made arrangements with the oc- 
cupant of his farm on Square 56, in accordance 
with which the lease was to be vacated and Mr. 
Wendell take possession of the place with all 
its appurtenances, including the furniture, in 
case the turn of affairs at Boston should drive 
him to the refuge of the hills; and that this 
was the origin of the family custom of annually 
visiting Pittsfield. We apprehend that in this 
instance, as in most others, tradition is truth a 
little scratched. The facts are probably these: 
While Boston was occupied by British troops 
residence there was impossible for a Whig of 
Oliver Wendell's standing. Colonel Wendell 
had initiated the custom alluded to, and it prob- 
ably suggested to his son the convenience of 
Pittsfield as a place of temporary residence, 
when his presence was not needed near the cen- 
ter of Revolutionary operations, or of refuge if 
any temporary reverse should befall the patri- 
ots. But the annual pilgrimage was not yet so 
invariable as it afterward became, and the de- 
tails of preparation for it at the farm were not 
so complete. What Mr. Wendell did was, we 
fancy, to make arrangements to remedy this. 
In the earliest years of the Revolution and those 
immediately preceding it, the Tory element in 



8o THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

Pittsfield was suppressed with a strong hand; 
but it had been powerful, and was still far from 
being annihilated. Its leaders were secretly in 
conference with the British generals, and, if the 
Royal Government of the Province had been 
fully and permanently restored, Pittsfield would 
have been no more safe as a refuge from its 
vengeance than Boston itself, however it might 
have been with some of the neighboring moun- 
tain towns, with their rugged recesses. 

This much at least is certain, that Judge Wen- 
dell did firmly establish and make definite 
arrangements for the custom of keeping a resi- 
dent farmer upon the place and making an 
annual pilgrimage to it; and that he did him- 
self adhere to it very rigidly. And therewith 
is connected a tradition quaint enough to have 
pleased a humorist like the author of the won- 
derful "One-Hoss Shay." Gentlemen of his 
class and time knew how to criticise the luxu- 
ries of the table and the proprieties of cookery 
quite as well at least as the most accomplished 
diner-out now does. A modern reader new to 
mildewed manuscripts would often be surprised 
to come across, in their letters and diaries, glow- 
ing descriptions of dinners technically accurate 
even to the elaborate menu dii repas; and he 
might be still more astonished to read their 
praises of rare and luxurious viands well served 
at taverns far inland, as, for instance, in Ver- 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 8i 

mont. Nevertheless Judge Wendell, in some of 
his earlier rides from Boston to Berkshire, had 
so disagreeable experience of country tavern 
dinners that it demanded a remedy; and he de- 
vised one. His favorite dish, when the variety 
afforded by his own table was not to be had, 
was roast or broiled chicken ; but he saw that 
his order for it at his wayside inn was invari- 
ably instantly followed by a mad rush for the 
barnyard, where, after a breathless chase, an 
unhappy fowl was hunted down, slaughtered, 
perhaps before his eyes, and served up to him 
before the life was well out of its body. Dis- 
gusted by this barbarism, he ever afterward, be- 
fore he left home to cross the mountains, had a 
dressed fowl placed in his carriage to be cooked 
and eaten at the tavern where he first dined; 
and where he was supplied with another pre- 
pared in the same way, to undergo a like season- 
ing for the next day's repast; and so on for the 
three, four, or more days of his journey, 

A lady, now long since passed away, used to 
speak of the carriage in which Judge Wendell 
made these journeys and rode about town as a 
marvel of magnificence in her childhood's eyes 
and in those of her young companions, who went 
out to meet its coming as those of later days do 
that of a circus. But the only one of its splen- 
dors that she could distinctly recall was the green 
blinds, which it seems answered for curtains. 
6 



82 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

Decided as Judge Wendell's political princi- 
ples were, and ardent as was his Revolutionary 
zeal, he was yet so noted for liberality to those 
who differed from him in sentiment and action 
that his compatriots pronounced him " fierce for 
moderation." Some instances illustrative of 
this trait in his character have a local Pittsfield 
flavor. In 1777 Peter and Henry Van Schaack, 
citizens of much distinction in Albany and 
Kinderhook, refusing to take the oath of alle- 
giance to the government newly established in 
New York after the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, were " exiled:" that is, placed under sur- 
veillance in places assigned them for residence 
in other States; in some of which they suffered 
pretty rough usage in the wa}^ of close confine- 
ment and otherwise. Boston and Pittsfield, 
however, were not among these inhospitable 
involuntary homes, notwithstanding the in- 
tense radicalism of the Pittsfield Whigs. 
Henry Van Schaack, being permitted to choose 
a residence in one of several Berkshire towns, 
after brief trials of Stockbridge and Richmond, 
selected Pittsfield. In Berkshire he suffered 
little persecution for opinion's sake, being per- 
haps protected by the personal friendship of 
Theodore Sedgwick, who was as " fierce for 
moderation" as Oliver Wendell, who appears 
to have intermitted his visits to Pittsfield in 
some of the latter years of the Revolution. At 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 83 

any rate, Mr. Van Schaack, a man of property 
and of much intellectual ability, had so pleas- 
ant experience of the place of his captivity that 
he bought the confiscated estate of a brother 
loyalist who had fled to England, and, after the 
peace, built upon it the spacious and substantial 
mansion now known as Broadhall, and lived in 
it many years, an active, public-spirited, and 
influential citizen of the town, and a devoted 
trustee of Williams College. 

Peter Van Schaack's son, Henry C. Van 
Schaack, of Manlius, N. Y. , published a memoir 
of his father and left in manuscript one of his 
uncle and namesake; from which we condense 
his statements of their relations with Judge 
Wendell. 

When Peter Van Schaack went to Boston, an 
exile, in February, 1777, "he experienced very 
liberal and gentlemanly treatment from Oliver 
Wendell, one of the leading patriots of the 
Massachusetts Bay. This gentleman evidently 
discovered that, in the person of the exile, no 
common character had been sent to the select- 
men of Boston; while the latter was deeply 
impressed by the consideration and humanity 
exhibited toward him, a perfect stranger to the 
place, its inhabitants, and public authorities, and 
with naught to recommend him but his frank 
and elevated gentlemanly appearance and con- 
versation, during a few days' stay in town. 



84 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

The acquaintance formed under so forbidding 
circumstances led to a long and interesting cor- 
respondence, some portion of which has been 
published. ..." After Henry Van Schaack 
became a citizen of Massachusetts, he visited 
Boston, and " made a point of calling upon 
Judge Wendell with no other introduction than 
his personal representation that he came to re- 
turn his thanks for Mr. Wendell's conduct 
toward his brother, when he was exiled to Bos- 
ton in 1777. This call resulted in an acquaint- 
ance that immediately ripened into a close and 
lasting friendship; during which they kept up 
an intimate correspondence." 

It might be suspected that the intimate 
friendship of Messrs. Wendell and Van Schaack 
was, at least in part, due to the fact that, in 
the bitter political strife which resulted in the 
adoption of the Federal Constitution, and the 
organization of the Federal and Democratic 
parties, both were Federalists of the most ex- 
treme type, and never ceased to be so. But 
another incident showed him equally kind and 
courteous to his Democratic opponents. Rev. 
Thomas Allen, the first Pittsfield minister, was 
very far from being " fierce for moderation" in 
his Jeffersonian Democracy. His son of the 
same name, a young man of the highest prom- 
ise for political eminence, was equally devoted 
to the same principles, although manifestation 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 85 

of his feeling was doubtless modified by a more 
intimate acquaintance with the world beyond 
the mountains. He was the idol of the Demo- 
cratic party in Pittsfield; but he died in Boston 
while representing the town in the Legislature 
of 1806, and was buried in the King's Chapel 
tomb of the Federal Wendells. Remembering 
what the town of Pittsfield was to the Wendell 
family, such a burial would seem not at all re- 
markable, but rather a matter-of-course, had 
personal feeling between political opponents 
been as it is to-day ; but in the early part of the 
century personal antipathies were so interwoven 
with political antagonisms that this must be 
counted another evidence of Judge Wendell's 
exceptional kindly courtesy. 

Nevertheless, nothing hindered his hearty 
maintenance of his Federalism in his country 
home, where he was inspiring and helpful to 
his fellows in politics. At that time political 
feeling in Pittsfield disturbed church and 
parochial harmony to such an extent that the 
Federal church members and parishioners were 
driven to organize a separate church and sepa- 
rate parish; and finally to erect a meeting- 
house. In all this, they had the warm sympathy 
of the Boston Federalists; but none of them 
appear to have contributed pecuniary aid ex- 
cept Judge Wendell, who gave liberally toward 
the building of the meeting-house and the sup- 



86 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

port in it of public worship, which he attended 
regularly when he was in town. In 1817 the 
two churches and parishes were reunited as the 
First Congregational ; and among the church 
plate there is still a solid silver christening- 
bowl that was presented by him to the Union 
Church. His voluntary contribution for the 
building of the Union meeting-house was much 
larger than the tax that was assessed upon him 
and other Wendell heirs for the building of that 
erected in 1791. It is a curious instance of the 
incidental connection of minor and widely sepa- 
rated events, that in 1849 Dr. Holmes saw the 
accidental burning of the long-disused Union 
meeting-house, and that it probably suggested 
to him these fine lines in " The Astrea," written 
in 1850. 

"The oriole drifting like a flake of fire, 
Torn by a whirlwind from a blazing spire. " 



'1 i 



kii'''^ ... 





|..^: 




Hi 




6 



#"-r7}?' 



III. 

DR. HOLMES' SUMMER VILLA AND LIFE 
IN IT. 

The Villa— Letters to a Pittsfield Lady and Her Remi- 
niscences — Letter to a School-Teacher — Blackber- 
ries and other Berries — The Canoe Meadows — The 
Holmes Pine. 

In the summer of 1848, four years after the 
Jubilee, Dr. Holmes built a pretty villa, crown- 
ing a knoll on his inherited estate: a plain, neat 
structure well adapted to his purposes. In his 
journal of August 5, 1848, Longfellow wrote: 
" Drove over, in the afternoon, to Dr. Holmes' 
house on the old Wendell farm — a snug little 
place, with views of the river and the moun- 
tains." This is tersely truthful. The river 
and the mountains gave the house its charm 
for its owner, who never tired of their praises. 
Every reader of " The Autocrat" will remember 
his fondness also for trees and his dissertation 
upon the specific merits of those distinguished 
for merit. We suspect that his friend, Dr. 
Orville Dewey, enjoyed his eulogy upon the 
Sheffield Elm, wdiich he described as "equally 
87 



88 THE POET AMOXG THE HILLS. 

remarkable for size and for perfection of form." 
He had " seen nothing in Berkshire County that 
came near it, and few to compare with it any- 
where." His irreverent remark that "the poor 
old Pittsfield Elm lived on its past reputa- 
tion," and that *' a wig of false leaves was indis- 
pensable to make it presentable," might be less 
palatable to the lovers of that venerable — and 
now fallen — tree, did they fail to consider that it 
was written, not unkindly, but in the same 
spirit that dictated the poem of " The Last 
Leaf." 

But, well as Dr. Holmes loved trees, his 
Holmes Road farm, when he determined to 
build a summer home upon it, was almost en- 
tirely destitute of them. Thanks to him, as we 
shall see, it is now very far from that. But, in 
telling of this home and Dr. Holmes' life in it, 
we must call in valuable aid. It is our general 
design to avoid all mention of Dr. Holmes' 
private life in Pittsfield; as one not personally 
familiar with it would be likely to commit 
blunders, and probable injustice. Remember- 
ing, however, a Pittsfield lady who, like her 
distinguished husband, was long an intimate 
friend of Dr. Holmes, and his frequent corre- 
spondent down to his latest years, the impulse 
was irresistible to fill what would otherwise 
have been ''an aching void," by soliciting some 
reminiscences of the poet and such extracts 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 89 

from his letters as would serve to illustrate his 
local verse, the life he enjoyed w^hile writing 
it, and his feeling toward the town. What fol- 
lows is due to her kindly acquiescence. 

Reminiscent. 

" Dr. Holmes' life in Pittsfield was fascinating 
to him, and to those who knew him here. Pass- 
ing parts of fifteen years in Boston, we knew 
him and his family there, visiting them in both 
their Montgomery Place and Charles Street 
residences. When they came to make their 
summer home on Holmes Road we often ex- 
changed visits. We frequently drove over at 
twilight, when the poet was at his best, and 
would show us, from his library windows, ani- 
mals and birds in the outlines of the eastern 
hills; or, what pleased him most, 'General 
Taylor mounted on his horse.' When the 
shadows deepened, so that he could no longer 
see these phantasms, which even daylight did 
not reveal to us, he would say : * Now, come 
into the dining-room, and we will have some 
caviare to the general. ' 

" He was not a ' society man' — observe what a 
wide difference in significance there is between 
'society' and 'social,' when they are used as 
adjectives. Once, by much persuasion, he was 
induced to attend the first evening party that 



90 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

was given by a lady nearly connected by mar- 
riage with the poet Longfellow's wife; but he 
was ill at ease; and during the evening I said 
to him: 'Why, you are just like^ boy!' The 
reply was ready: * I like that!' he exclaimed, 
'the best compliment of my life!' " 

Extracts from Dr Holmes' Letters. 

February, 18^6. — I have many nibbles for my 
place in Pittsfield, from Boston and New York; 
but it takes many nibbles to make a bite. 

January /j, /cfj/. — Seven sweet summers, the 
happiest of my life. I wouldn't exchange the 
recollection of them for a suburban villa. One 
thing I shall always be glad of; that I planted 
seven hundred trees for somebody to sit in the 
shade of. 

July 22, 186^. — I like to see worthless rich 
people succumb to the deserving poor who, be- 
ginning with sixpence or nothing, come out at 
last on Beacon Street, and have the sun in their 
windows all the year round. [A bit of sarcasm 
in this?— Ed.] 

July 16, 1872. — I am a pretty well-seasoned 
old stick of timber or you would have brought 
me to your purpose [to obtain a poem from him 
at the dedication of the soldiers' monument in 
the Pittsfield Park, when George William Cur- 
tis delivered the oration], I have glorified your 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 9I 

ploughman and tried to sanctify your cemetery. 
But I am older now — set in my ways. I want 
to put away all such things, lay up my heels 
and read story-books. — No! my dear madame; 
you cannot coax me — but it grieves me to say 
*'No," to you. 

December 8, 188^. — When you meet any one 
who, you think, remembers me, say that I am 
still loyal to the old place, . . . and that the 
very stones of it are as dear to me as were those 
of Jerusalem to the ancient Hebrews. 

January i, 1883. — A Happy New Year! And 
as many such as you can count, until you reach 
a hundred; and then begin again, if you like 
this planet well enough. ... I delight in re- 
calling the old scenes. Changed they must be; 
yet I seem to be carried back to the broad [East. 
— Ed.] street, our usual drive on our way from 
the " Four Corners" and " Canoe Meadows" [The 
Wendell Farm], as my mother told me they 
called it. It seems too bad to take away the 
town's charming characteristics; but such a 
healthful, beautiful, central situation could not 
resist its destiny; and you must have a mayor, 
aldermen, and common council. But Greylock 
will remain, and you cannot turn the course of 
the Housatonic. I cannot believe that it is 
thirty years since I said " Good-bye," expecting 
to return the next season. As we passed the 
gate under the maple which may stand there 



92 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

now, we turned and looked at the house and at 
the Great Pine which stood — and 1 hope still 
stands — in its solitary grandeur and beauty; 
passed the two bridges to the railroad station — 
and, Good-bye, Dear Old Folks! 

February 7, i8gi. — I do so love to hear about 
dear old Pittsfield: what is done there and who 
does it ; how the new city gets on ; and all the rest. 

March 12, i8gi. — You are to be a city. Think 
of my little boy a Judge and able to send me to 
jail if I do not behave myself. I have given 
up my professorship, and am now in my literary 
shirt-sleeves. 

October 12, iSgj. — What a grand spunky town, 
Pittsfield is! You are to have ''The Ancient 
and Honorable there;" of which my great- 
grandfather, Jacob Wendell, was colonel, — 
Great changes; but Greylock, the Housatonic 
and Pontoosuc still exist. 

December 14, iSgj. — Dear old Pittsfield! shall 
I ever have spunk enough to take another look 
at it? It would be both a pleasure and a poign- 
ant ache. The old outlines are there. The 
trees I planted would look kindly down upon 
me. But, alas! how much would be missing! 
And then, you are getting so grand and New 
Yorky, I should be lost in its splendor and 
wealth. 

July 24^ 18^4. — It tires me to write now. I 
cannot give your letters to my secretary. My 




THE GREAT PINE AT HOLMES' VILLA. 

Pittsfield, Mass. 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 93 

eyes are dim — my fingers crampy. — Were I 
forty years old, instead of three-score and 
twenty-four, I would try to buy my old place, 
just as it 7vas, and be once more your summer 
neighbor. My habits are fixed. I am ill. 
Write and aid my convalescence with a lively 
manifesto from our blessed city of Pittsfield. 
The pendulum has a very short range of oscil- 
lation. 

"Alas! it soon forever ceased to vibrate," 
adds his favored correspondent. 

Letter to a School-Teacher. 

We will quote one more characteristic letter 
of Dr. Holmes, which is cumulative as regards 
much in those already given ; but which is also 
evidence of the great author's kindly regard for 
the little people who are to be the future read- 
ers of all authors, and his appreciation of those 
who are preparing them to be intelligent ones. 
It was written to Miss Fannie E. Brewster, a 
teacher in one of the Pittsfield grammar schools, 
who, in preparing her class for a rhetorical exer- 
cise upon the life and works of Dr. Holmes, 
asked him for a few words, to give them a 
keener interest in it. He replied promptly and 
pleasantly in a letter that will interest school- 
teachers and all who love children, — as who 
that has a heart does not?— as follows: 



94 THE POET AMONG THE H/LLS. 

Boston, May 22, 1884. 
My Dear Miss Brewster: 

I drop all the papers in my hand, to write 
those few words you ask me for. The memory 
of Pittsfield is dear to me. How can I forget 
the seven blissful summers passed there? Most 
of my old Pittsfield friends are gone; but, if the 
younger generation still recall my name, I feel 
as if I had yet a home among you. Give my 
warm regards and best wishes to my young 
friends; and believe me, 

Very truly yours, 

Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

There are passages in some of Dr. Holmes' 
prose writings which show how observant he 
was of features in the region about his villa, that 
challenge observation less boldly than the moun- 
tains, the rivers, and the meadows; and they 
show how suggestive of thought even little 
things were to him. In one of his books he 
says: 

" In Pittsfield I missed the huckleberry, the 
bayberry, the sweet fern, and the barberry. At 
least there were none near my residence, so far 
as I know. But we have blackberries — a great 
number of the high-bush kind. I wonder if 
others have observed what an imitative fruit it 
is. I have tasted the strawberry, the pineapple, 
and I do not know how many other flavors in it. 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 95 

If you think a little and have read Darwin and 
Huxley, perhaps you will believe that it and 
all the fruits it tastes of may have come from a 
common progenitor." 

For Dr. Holmes the blackberry seems to have 
been among berries what the mockingbird is 
among birds. It would not be strange if the 
reader, the next time he enjoys a plate of black- 
berries— or better, when he eats them fresh from 
the bush — should be enabled by this paragraph 
to detect some of these borrowed flavors. 

The sweet fern grows in abundance along the 
base of the Taconic hills some four or five miles 
west of Dr. Holmes' residence, and some of 
their summits are prolific of blueberries. To 
be sure the blueberry imperfectly supplies the 
place of the luscious black huckleberry; but 
then the huckleberry bush is often underlaid 
by a rattlesnake or two, while Pittsfield is as 
free as Ireland itself from that terror of rocky 
and swampy lands. A few bushes of the bar- 
berry grow sporadically on the hills, but they 
do not take kindly, or unkindl)', to the soil, and 
cover acres of it with their prickly, although 
prettily adorned and spicily fruited, brambles, 
as they do in eastern Massachusetts and New 
Hampshire. 

Here is another instance of Dr. Holmes' 
thoughtful observation of little things about his 
residence: The Canoe Meadows on his estate. 



96 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

SO often mentioned in our story, — and on which 
he looked with pride from his library windows 
and the pleasant rear piazza of his villa — were 
so named because the Stockbridge Indians were 
accustomed to leave their birch canoes in them 
while they visited the graves of their fathers 
near the opposite shore of the Housatonic, which 
flows through them; and probably also while 
hunting or trapping in the neighborhood. This 
is his statement of and comment on his aborigi- 
nal findings there : 

" At Cantabridge near the sea, I have once or 
twice turned up an Indian arrowhead in a fresh 
furrow. At Canoe Meadows in the Berkshire 
mountains, I have found Indian arrowheads. 
So everywhere, Indian arrowheads. Whether 
a hundred or a thousand years old, who knows? 
and who cares? There is no history to the red 
race. ... A few instincts walking about on 
legs, and holding a tomahawk: — There is the 
Indian for all time." 

There is an underlying touch of pathos in 
Dr. Holmes' mention of the great pine upon 
which his last look lingered when for the last 
time he left his home by the Housatonic. It 
was the only large and handsome tree on his 
estate when he inherited it, and we seem to re- 
member a statement regarding it, from his own 
pen, more extended than that quoted. But, 
like many similar memories, it may be only 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. ^-j 

seeming. At least, we cannot, for the life of 
us, recall when, and in what work, we read it, 
if we read it at all ; and the seeming may have 
come from conversation or a dream. We can 
and do, however, present a fine portrait of the 
noble tree, from which a fair conception of it, 
as it now stands, may be gained. 
7 



IV. 

A VISION OF THE HOUSATpNIC RIVER. 

Dr. Holmes Loved the River— Remembered It by the 
English River Cam— Loved also by Many Men and 
Women of Letters— The Poem. 

Dr. Holmes' affection for the Housatonic 
River, and his pride in its graceful winding 
through his ancestral acres, within sight from 
his library windows, were manifested on ever)' 
fitting opportunity. Probably as a humorist 
and proprietor of the Canoe Meadows, and per- 
haps as a "medicine man" as well, he approved 
the time-honored local pun that the best of all 
tonics is the Housatonic. A striking instance 
of his fond memory of the familiar stream ap- 
pears in his " Hundred Days Trip to Europe" in 
1886. During his visit to England he received 
the honorary degree of LL. D. from the Univer- 
sity of Cambridge, there being some very 
flattering demonstrations of approval by the as- 
sembly while the ceremony of conferring it 
was going on. He gives a modest account of 
it in his book, and a pleasing one of the old col- 
lege town. But even on an occasion when a 
98 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 99 

good degree of personal pride would have been 
pardonable, he did not forget his old home, and 
his closing paragraph of the story is this : 

" The University left a very deep impression 
on my mind, in which a few grand objects pre- 
dominate over all the rest; all being delightful. 
I was fortunate enough to see the gathering of 
the boats, which is the last scene in the annual 
procession. The show was altogether lovely. 
The pretty river [the Cam] about as wide as the 
Housatonic, I should judge, as that slender 
stream flows through Canoe Meadow — my old 
Pittsfield residence — the gaily dressed people 
who crowded the banks, the boats with the gal- 
lant young oarsmen who handled them so skill- 
fully made a picture not often excelled." 

Dr. Holmes was not alone in his appreciation 
of 

"The gentle river winding free 
Through realms of peace and liberty." 

Long ago, when the Housatonic wound its 
sinuous way through an almost unbroken and 
not altogether peaceful forest, the great student 
of man's will, Jonathan Edwards, recognized 
its beauty, and, doubtless, resting now and then 
^ from herculean labors in his liliputian mental 
Jl workshop at Stockbridge, strolled across the 
street to enjoy it, and be soothed by the " v^'^r- 
bling tone" of its rippling waters. Since that 



lOO THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

great thinker bade it adieu, other great thinkers 
of thoughts far other than his, but loving it as 
he did, have celebrated it in prose and verse 
until now it is well-nigh the most classic of 
American streams. Among those who have 
contributed to its fame, most of them having 
either permanent or temporary homes near its 
banks, are Catherine Sedgwick, William Cullen 
Bryant, David Dudley Field, Herman Melville, 
Henry Ward Beecher, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 
Fanny Kemble, Lydia Huntley Sigourney, 
Henry W. Longfellow, and Dr. William Allen, 
besides scores of minor writers. Its most marked 
tribute from Dr. Holmes' pen is " The Vision of 
THE HousATONic RivER," which was written 
and used as an epilogue to its author's lecture 
on Wordsworth. The reader will bear in mind 
its original purpose; and also that the book re- 
ferred to iti the eighth verse is Wordsworth's 
poems, with their introduction of English scen- 
ery, meadow-flora, and bird-life. In lieu of the 
lecture, we will preface the "Vision" with what 
the Autocrat wrote of the Housatonic and its sur- 
roundings in very poetic prose. After dwelling 
awhile on pleasant memories of a favorite Con- 
necticut resort, the Autocrat continues: 

" And again, once more among those other 
hills that shut in the amber-flowing Housatonic, 
— dark stream, but clear, like lucid orbs that 
shine between the lids of auburn-haired, sherry- 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. lol 

wine-eyed demi-blondes, — in the home over- 
looking the winding stream and the vsmooth flat 
meadow; looked down upon by wild hills, 
where the tracks of bears and catamounts may 
yet sometimes be seen on the winter snow ; fac- 
ing the twin summits which rise, far north — 
the highest waves of the great land-storm in all 
this billowy region — suggestive to mad fancies 
of the breasts of a half-buried Titaness, stretched 
out by a stray thunderbolt and hastily hidden 
away beneath the leaves of the forest : in that 
home where seven blessed summers were passed, 
which stand in memory like the Seven Golden 
Candlesticks in the beatific vision of the holy 
dreamer . . . this long articulated sigh of 
reminiscences — this calenture which shows me 
the maple-shaded plains of Berkshire and the 
mountain-circled green of Grafton." 

The Vision. 

Come, spread your wings as I spread mine 

And leave the crowded hall, 
For where the eyes of twilight shine 

O'er evening's western wall. 

These are the pleasant Berkshire hills, 

Each with its leafy crown ; 
Hark ! from their sides a thousand rills 

Come singing sweetly down. 

A thousand rills ; they leap and shine, 
Strained through the mossy nooks, 



102 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

Till, clasped in many a gathering twine, 
They swell a hundred brooks. 

A hundred brooks, and still they run 
With ripple, shade, and gleam, 

Till clustering all their braids in one, 
They flow a single stream. 

A bracelet, spun from mountain mist, 

A silvery sash unwound. 
With ox-bow curve and sinuous twist, 

It writhes to reach the "Sound." 

This is my bark ; a pigmy's ship ; 

Beneath a child it rolls ; 
Fear not ; one body makes it dip, 

But not a thousand souls. 

Float we the grassy banks between ; 

Without an oar we glide ; 
The meadows, sheets of living green, 

Unroll on either side. 

Come, take the book we love so well, 
And let us read and dream. 

We see whate'er its pages tell 
And sail an English stream. 

Up to the clouds the lark has sprung, 

Still trilling as he flies ; 
The linnet sings as there he sung ; 

The unseen cuckoo cries ; 

And daisies strew the banks along. 
And yellow kingcups shine, 

With cowslips and a primrose throng, 
And humble celandine. 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 103 

Ah, foolish dream ! When Nature nursed 

Her daughter in the West, 
Europe had drained one fountain first ; 

She bared her other breast. 

On the young planet's orient shore 

Her morning hand she tried ; 
Then turned the broad medallion o'er 

And stamped the sunset side. 

Take what she gives ; her pine's tall stem, 

Her elm with drooping spray ; 
She wears her mountain diadem 

Still in her own proud way. 

Look on the forest's ancient kings, 

The hemlock's towering pride ; 
Yon trunk had twice a hundred rings 

And fell before it died. 

Nor think that Nature saves her bloom 

And slights her new domain ; 
For us she wears her court costume ; 

Look on its courtly train ! 

The HI}'' with the sprinkled dots, 

Brands of the noontide beam ; 
The cardinal and the blood-red spots — 

Its double in the stream, 

As if some wounded eagle's breast 

Slow throbbing o'er the plain, 
Had left its airy path impressed 

In drops of scarlet rain. 

And hark ! and hark ! the woodland rings ; 
There thrilled the thrush's soul : 



104 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

And look ! and look ! those lightning wings — 
The fire-plumed oriole ! 

Above the hen-hawk swims and swoops, 
Flung from the bright blue sky ; 

Below, the robin hops, and whoops 
His little Indian cry. 

The beetle on the wave has brought 

A pattern all his own, 
Shaped like the razor- breasted yacht 

To England not unknown. 

Beauty runs virgin in the woods, 

Robed in her rustic green, 
And oft a longing thought intrudes 

As if we nought have seen. 

Her every fingers, every joint. 

Ringed with some golden line ; 
Poet whom Nature did anoint ! 

Had our young home been thine. 

Yet think not so ; old England's blood 

Runs warm in English veins, 
But wafted o'er the icy flood 

Its better life remains ; 

Our children know each wild-wood smell, 

The bayberry and the fern ; 
The man who does not know them well, 

Is all too old to learn. 

Be patient ; Love has long been grown ; 

Ambition waxes strong ; 
And Heaven is asking time alone 

To mould a child of song. 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 105 

When fate draws forth the mystic lot 

The chosen bard that calls, 
No eye will be upon the spot 

Where the bright token falls. 

Perchance the blue Atlantic's brink. 

The broad Ohio's gleam, 
Or where the panther stoops to drink 

Of wild Missouri's stream : 

Where winter clasps with glittering ice 

Katahdin's silver chains, 
Or Georgia's flowery paradise 

Unfolds its blushing plains : 

But know that none of ancient earth 

Can bring the sacred fire ; 
He drinks the wave of Western birth 

That rules the Western lyre ! 



YOUNG LADIES' INSTITUTE POEM. 

Character of the Institute — Visited by John Quincy 
Adams— Graduating Exercises in 1849 — Speech by 
Ex-President John Tyler — Speech and Poem by 
Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

We have already spoken of the Pittsfield, 
afterward the Maplewood, Young Ladies' In- 
stitute in connection with the Berkshire Jubilee 
dinner which was given upon its grounds. It 
was founded in 1841 by Rev. Wellington H. 
Tyler, a man of unlimited energy and spirit in 
his undertaking. In 1849 it had attained an 
enviable position among American institutions 
for the higher education of young women, and 
the addresses, poems, and like exercises at its 
graduating anniversaries would have done honor 
to any college commencement day. We are 
about to speak of these exercises in 1849, when 
Dr. Holmes took part in them ; but the story of 
that occasion will derive interest from the re- 
lation of an incident in the annals of the insti- 
tution six years before. 

In the summer of 1843 the venerable ex- 
106 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 107 

President John Quincy Adams made a tour 
through the principal towns of Canada and 
northern New York, which was a continual 
series of remarkable ovations in which all classes 
and all parties united. On his way home, he 
was formally invited to Pittsfield, where the 
people of the town gave him a brilliant recep- 
tion, in the course of which he made several 
characteristic speeches. At the public dinner 
he gave this toast: " The hills of Berkshire; the 
vales of Berkshire; the men of Berkshire; but, 
above all, the women of Berkshire." 

Then the omnibus in which the young ladies 
were accustomed to ride conveyed him, with the 
officers of the day, to the Institute grounds, 
which had been adorned with rich evergreen 
arches and other decorations. Having been 
appropriately welcomed, " he addressed the 
members of the Institute in the most feeling 
and happy manner." He said that during the 
past month he had met with many kind recep- 
tions and tokens of regard from every rank, 
party, age, and profession, not only in a neigh- 
boring State, but in Canada. Yet in all, he had 
witnessed nothing so gratifying and interesting 
to him as the scene now before him. So many 
blooming countenances ! He loved to look upon 
them — he should be happy to grasp their hands; 
and their voices, too, he should delight to hear; 
for these, he doubted not, were full of the 



io8 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

sweetest melody. He saw before him those 
who reminded him of the happiest relations of 
his life — the relations of wife, mother, sister, 
daughter, and grand-daughter. It was these 
very relations that were impelling him this 
moment on his way, and drawing him with re- 
sistless power to his home. And, if he seemed 
to be breaking away from them, it was only 
that he might meet a wife, a daughter, and a 
grand-daughter of the same age as many he saw 
before him. 

Then, after the singing of a hymn and warm 
hand-grasping, the venerable statesman and 
the blooming school-girls parted; but with 
memories of the day that could never fade. 

That was a red-letter day for the Institute; 
and another like it came six years later. At 
the graduating exercises of 1849, the report of 
the examining committee was written and read 
by Rev. Dr. Henry Neill, of Lenox, an eloquent 
preacher and the author of some works distin- 
guished for elegant scholarship, and the address 
was delivered by Rev. Dr. Brainerd, of New 
York. 

Among the guests that summer at the Broad- 
hall boarding-house was ex-President John Ty- 
ler, who, whatever politicians thought, seemed 
to enjoy keenly the relief afforded by his trans- 
fer from a not excessively agreeable official life 
at Washington to one of ease and independence, 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 109 

amid Berkshire scenery in the company of his 
recently wedded wife: a woman of brilliant 
wt, much culture, pleasing- manners, and withal 
evidently devoted to her equally devoted hus- 
band, who, moreover, did not lack the society of 
friends whose friendship was to be prized, 
among his fellow-boarders and others in Berk- 
shire, including Dr. Holmes. We venture to 
guess that there were pleasant passages of wit 
between the great humorist and Mrs. Tyler, 
who was nothing loath to such encounters. 
President Tyler attended the anniversary of the 
Young Ladies' Institute, and, after the more 
formal exercises, made, in response to the call 
of the principal, a most genial and pleasing 
address, from which we quote one paragraph : 

" Is there any expression in language that so 
thrills the heart-strings as that of our 'mother'? 
She who gave direction to our early ideas, who 
first caused us to raise our little hands and eyes 
in prayer to the throne of the Most High ; and 
shall her daughters be denied admission to 
those portals which open to a knowledge of the 
deep mysteries of nature and science? 1 am most 
happy to know that those portals are no longer 
closed, but are broadly and widely opened." 

He then expressed an earnest hope for the 
success of the Institute and the prosperity of its 
teachers and trustees. 

The principal, then, with a few compliment- 



no THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

ary remarks, called upon Dr. Holmes, who re- 
sponded with the following poem and prefatory 
remarks: 

" If it were any other place than Pittsfield, and 
if the occasion were any other than this which 
has called us together, I should certainly be 
unwilling to present myself before this audience 
after the exercises to which we have just lis- 
tened. But the place has so many claims upon 
me, connected as it is with my most cherished 
recollections and my brightest hopes, and the 
occasion is one so capable of unsealing the lips 
of the dumb, and kindling light in the eyes of 
the blind, that I cannot refuse to follow my im- 
pulse against my judgment. After the inter- 
esting address which you have heard, the full 
and most satisfactory report of the committee, 
and the eloquent remarks of our distinguished 
visitor, it would ill become me to occupy your 
time with any attempts at expatiation on those 
subjects which naturally present themselves, 
but which have already been so well treated and 
so vividly illustrated. Let me rather, instead 
of toiling through an unnecessary series of 
phrases, and bowing myself out in a finished 
peroration, have recourse to an artifice under 
cover of which I have sometimes retreated from 
dangerous positions, like that which I now 
occupy. 

" You have heard some allusions made to the 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. iii 

strains of a music-box, which, if it is wound up, 
plays out its single tune, and then subsides into 
mute companionship. There is another kind 
of music, which, as some think, is occasionally 
not disagreeable ; and of which I mean to give 
you a most brief and compendious specim.en. 
You must not think you are to have a symphony 
on the organ or a sonata from the piano; one 
little tinkling tune is all that will be played to 
you, and then the box will shut up, and you are 
to say no more about it. 

"I will read you a few lines from a scrap of 
paper which, as you see, I have kept artfully 
concealed about my person. 

A Vision of Life. 

The well-known weakness of the rhyming race 
Is to be ready in and out of place ; 
No bashful glow, no timid begging off, 
No sudden hoarseness, no discordant cough 
(Those coy excuses which your singers plead, 
When faintly uttering : "No, I can't, indeed") 
Impedes your rhymester in his prompt career. 
Give him but hint; and won't the muse appear? 

So, without blushing, when they asked, I came — 

I whom the plough-share, not the quill, should claim — 

The rural nymphs that on my labors smile 

May mend my fence, but cannot mend my style. 

The winged horse disdains my steady team, 

And teeming fancy must forget to dream. 

I harrow fields and not the hearts of men ; 

Pigs, and not poems, claim my humble pen. 



112 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

And thus to enter on so new a stage, 
With the fair critics of this captious age 
Might lead a sceptic to the rude surmise 
That cits, turned rustics, are not overwise ; 
Or the bright verdure of the pastoral scene 
Had changed my hue, and made me very green. 

A few brief words that, fading as they fall, 
Like the green garlands of a festal hall. 
May lend one glow, one breath of fragrance pour, 
Ere swept ungathered from the silent floor. 
Such is my offering for your festal day ; 
These sprigs of rhyme ; this metrical boquet. 

O, my sweet sisters — let me steal the name 
Nearest to love and most remote from blame — 
How brief an hour of fellowship ensures 
The heart's best homage at a shrine like yours. 
As o'er your band our kindling glances fall. 
It seems a life-time since I've known you all ! 
Yet in each face where youthful graces blend 
Our partial memory still revives a friend ; 
The forms once loved, the features once adored, 
In her new picture nature has restored. 

Those golden ringlets, rippling as they flow, 
We wreathed with blossoms many years ago. 
Seasons have wasted ; but, remembered yet. 
There gleams the lily through those braids of jet. 
Cheeks that have faded worn by slow decay 
Have caught new blushes from the morning's ray. 
That simple ribbon, crossed upon the breast, 
Wakes a poor heart that sobbed itself to rest ; 
Aye, thus she wore it; tell me not she died. 
With that fair phantom floating by my side, 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 113 

'Tis as of old : why ask the vision's name? 
All, to the white robe's folding, is the same ; 
And there, unconscious of a hundred snows, 
On that white bosom burns the self-same rose. 

Oh, dear illusion, how thy magic power 
Works with two charms — a maiden and a flower ! 
Then blame me not if, lost in memory's dream, 
I cheat your hopes of some expansive theme. 

When the pale star-light fills the evening dim, 

A misty mantle folds our river's brim. 

In those white wreaths, how oft the wanderer sees 

Half real shapes, the playthings of the breeze. 

While every image in the darkening tide 

Fades from its breast, unformed and undescribed. 

Thus, while I stand among your starry train, 

My gathering fancies turn to mist again. 

O'er time's dark wave aerial shadows play, 

But all the living landscape melts away. 



VI. 

THE PLOUGHMAN. 

Genesis of the Berkshire Agricultural Society— Elkanah 
Watson — Major Thomas Melville — John Quincy 
Adams upon Agricultural Oratory — The Pictur- 
esque First Cattle Show — How Women Received 
Their Premiums — About Ploughing Matches — Cattle 
Shows of 1849 ^^^ 1S51 — Dr. Holmes' Ploughing 
Match Report— His Poem, The Ploughman. 

The Agricultural vSocieties, of which almost 
every county in the Union and in Canada 
boasts at least one, still, as of old, furnish their 
peoples, in their autumnal cattle-shows and 
fairs, with gala days strikingly unlike any 
others. Most of them retain in some good de- 
gree the quaint provincial features which gave 
them irresistible attractions for country folk, and 
a singular charm for those familiar with the 
wide world's great spectacular festivals. In 
spite of " improvements" — which, whether they 
improve or not, do certainly innovate — the fan- 
dangos, the merry-go-rounds, the rude side- 
shows, the ruder oyster booths, the sweet-cider 
barrels, and all that used to delight what "Josh 
114 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 115 

Billings," and other county-wags before him, 
were wont to call " thekritter-look-krowd," still 
hold their own pretty well. Still, every fall, 
more or less competent orators dilate upon the 
historic, social, and economical aspects of the 
organizations they address, with more or less 
knowledge of what they are talking about. 
The practice of selecting agricultural orators 
for other reasons than their knowledge of agri- 
culture has come down to us from the good old 
times. People, as a mass, always did, and 
always will, run to see and hear live governors, 
and live lions of any species. They draw. 
For draft purposes they easily take the first cat- 
tle-show premiums even over elephants. John 
Quincy Adams, however, did not favor their use. 
In a speech at Pittsfield, he mentioned that he 
had received several invitations to address ag- 
ricultural societies, one of them from the " Old 
Berkshire," asking him to speak at its coming 
anniversary. " But," said he, " think of my com- 
ing to Berkshire to teach agriculture ! I am no 
farmer: why, in all my life, I have not been at 
home long enough to become a proficient in 
it, and I believe with "Poor Richard," that 

'"He who by the plough would thrive 
Himself must either hold or drive. '" 

But then Mr. Adams would have been very 
likely to disapprove many things now as 



it6 the poet among THE HILLS. 

strongly intrenched in popular favor as the 
Leo-Hunter craze of the agricultural societies 
is. And the societies continue to flourish in 
spite of all fault-finding critics. Something, 
indeed, of the picturesque and poetic coloring 
that gave beauty to the quaintness of their 
autumnal gatherings has faded since the times 
when William CuUen Bryant and Oliver Wen- 
dell Holmes were among their poets laureate; 
but not all. They are not yet entirely untinted 
of their old fascinating hues. This is especially 
true of the " Ancient and Honorable" Berkshire 
Agricultural Society — the parent of them all. 
The dominant peculiarities, which this institu- 
tion transmitted to all its widespread progeny, 
were the fruit of much culture and knowledge 
of the world, gained partly in American cities, 
but much more largely in Europe; and applied 
to a secluded but intelligent and ambitious 
community. Elkanah Watson, the founder of 
the society, had opportunities in his youth to 
closely observe men and affairs during the 
Revolution, and to acquire something of its 
spirit; but, coming of age in 1779, he went to 
France, where he was engaged until 1784 in 
mercantile business that called for extensive 
travel in that country, as well as in Holland, 
Belgium, and Great Britain. Returning to 
America, he made his home in Albany, where, 
associated with several patriotic and public- 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 117 

spirited statesmen in plans for the good of the 
country, he became particularly interested in 
their efforts, and those of the New York State 
Agricultural Society, for the improvement of 
American wools, — which sadly needed improve- 
ment — by the importation of the best Span- 
ish breeds of sheep, purchased in the mar- 
kets thrown open by the wars of Napoleon. In 
1807, he removed to Pittsfield, succeeding 
Henry Van Schaack on the Broadhall estate. 
Here he remembered what he had seen of festal 
and oratorical agricultural ^airs in France, and 
of the less showy solid cattle-shows of England; 
and also that the New York State Society had 
recommended county societies and shows. These 
memories, together with the favorable position 
he occupied at Pittsfield, naturally inspired him 
with the idea which culminated four years later 
— after a world of effort on his part — in the es- 
tablishment of the Berkshire Society for the Pro- 
motion of Agriculture and Manufactures. In 
1814 he was succeeded in its presidency by Maj. 
Thomas Melville, who, when Mr. Watson re- 
turned to Albany in 1816, also succeeded him 
in the Broadhall property. He was an uncle of 
Herman Melville and son of the Maj. Thomas 
Melville who was one of the Boston Tea-Party 
of 1773, and, in his extreme old age, became 
the original of Dr. Holmes' " Last Leaf." The 
younger Major Melville passed much of his 



ii8 THE POET AA/O.VG THE HILLS. 

early life in France, where he had an interest- 
ing and romantic experience, and married a 
lady of family. He returned in season to be 
made commandant, with the rank of major, of 
the Pittsfield cantonment, and commissioner 
for the purchase of army supplies, a position 
which enabled him to speedily learn much of 
Berkshire farmers and their husbandry. 

This happy combination, in the first two pres- 
idents of the Agricultural Society, of practical 
local knowledge, with tastes cultivated and 
thoughts quickened by energetic lives and wide 
observation abroad, all stimulated by patriotism 
enhanced by the war, together with Mr. Wat- 
son's inventive imagination and liberal purse, 
had its natural fruit in a community ordinarily 
distinguished for plain common sense and 
homely every-day labors; but which many in- 
stances show to have been extremely susceptible 
of incitement to enthusiasm when its love of 
country was properly appealed to. And a burn- 
ing desire to free America from dependence 
upon British looms was a conspicuous, and in- 
deed the primal, motive of the founders of the 
Berkshire Society for the promotion of agricul- 
ture and manufactures. 

Pre-existing associations had exerted them- 
selves zealously and accomplished something in 
this direction; but their members were, for the 
most part, men actively and deeply engaged in 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 119 

business, politics, or society. They held their 
meetings in metropolitan centers and worked, 
or sought to work, rather upon than among and 
with the country farmers. Thus they failed 
to obtain any strong hold upon the popular 
heart, and accomplished comparatively little in 
elevating farmers as a class intellectually, so- 
cially, or even in capacity for their own every- 
day calling. They created no great holiday 
for the people, no fellowship in the farmer's 
craft; and thus they missed the most potent 
means for raising American husbandry to a 
higher plane. "They depended," said Mr. 
Watson, "too much upon type, and did not ad- 
dress the interest and the sentiment of the 
people." Their approaches wxre too direct. 
They sought to influence their humbler fellows 
almost solely through the cold medium of the 
press; neglecting appeals to the imagination, 
to social sentiment, and to that fondness for 
pageantry which characterized the times. All 
this the founders of the Berkshire Society re- 
versed; so molding it that in a few years its 
example inaugurated a new era in American 
agricultural life. This it effected through its 
annual cattle-shows and fairs. 

The cattle-show, which was the germ of a 
class that has so increased and multiplied that 
its scions now flourish in every corner of the 
land, was held, under a call from twenty-six in- 



120 THE POET AMONG THE HI I. L Si. 

fluential Berkshire farmers, in 1810, around the 
tall old elm which then stood in solitary gran- 
deur on the village green that is now known as 
the Pittsfield Park. Although this show was 
little more than a display of cattle and sheep, 
followed by an address from Mr, Watson, it ex- 
cited a wide interest, particularly in New Eng- 
land and New York. At home it created the 
Berkshire Agricultural Society, under whose 
auspices and control the second show and fair 
was held on the last Tuesday and Wednesday 
of September, 181 1. This is the occasion to 
which Pittsfield traditions revert with unlimited 
pride; although some of the features of the 
show afterward the most popular were not yet 
introduced. 

Two of Berkshire's most glorious September 
days blessed the young festival with an atmos- 
phere at once genial and bracing. An un- 
clouded but not torrid sun, and foliage not yet 
tinged with any hectic flush ; all that Nature's 
ministers can offer in provision for the most 
unalloyed enjoyment of whatever of pleasure or 
interest man may prepare for enjoyment. The 
streets and Park square early took on the lively 
aspect that subsequent cattle-shows made famil- 
iar. People from the country round about, in 
all sorts of vehicles from a "one-horse shay" to 
a farm-wagon, began, before the rising of the 
sun, to pour into town, mixed with herds of cat- 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 121 

tie, sheep in wagons or in flocks, a few swine, 
and some mechanical inventions. Immediately 
around the tall elm, there was an inclosure for 
the live-stock entered for premium. The re- 
maining space and the neighboring streets were 
soon thronged with an excited, expectant crowd : 
"many of them females," — although the fea- 
tures which afterward made the festival of spe- 
cial interest to them were wanting. Booths for 
the sale of refreshments and Yankee notions 
had sprung up like mushrooms, after the fash- 
ion of the then familiar militia muster-fields. 
The committee had announced that " innocent 
amusements would be permitted," and enter- 
prising genius provided a plenty. Chief among 
them was the fandango, or, as they styled it, 
the "aerial phaeton," whose dizzy pleasures 
have never since that day failed the lads and 
lasses who resort to cattle-shows. Then " the 
first elephant ever brought to America" gave 
the country folk their first chance to see " that 
remarkable creature," except in a cant meta- 
phorical sense. 

The procedings and pageants of the occasion 
were all unique and "telling;" but the proces- 
sion was its crowning glory. Mr. Watson, in 
his diary, calls it " splendid, novel, and impos- 
ing beyond anything of the kind ever before 
exhibited in America." First came the Pitts- 
field band, whose music is described as inspirit- 



122 THE POET AMOXG THE HILLS. 

ing and creditable. Then followed sixty yoke 
of prime oxen, the oxen being driven and the 
plow held by the two oldest farmers in the 
town, whose plowing of its soil dated back to a 
time when it could only be done side by side 
with a musket, and under the near protection 
of log forts which these same old farmers had 
themselves built. Next came a broad platform 
drawn by oxen, bearing a broadcloth-hand- 
loom with a flying shuttle and a spinning- 
jenny of forty spindles, both machines kept in 
operation by skillful workmen; one of them, 
a remarkably fine-looking Englishman, wearing 
the costume of Dr. Holmes' " Last Leaf," which 
had even then almost passed from common 
wear. In this case it was entirely black, but 
decorated with an abundance of bright-colored 
ribbons or " favors." The next broad platform 
was drawn by horses — a prophecy of the coming 
change in rural motive power. It was in the 
nature of a triumphal car for what Berkshire 
had already achieved in manufactures; exhibit- 
ing rolls of broadcloth, bolts of sail-duck, hand- 
some rose-blankets, leather, muskets, drums, 
anchors, and tall clocks like that which then 
stood in the hall stairwaj of the Gold mansion 
awaiting the coming of fame. The last divi- 
sion was composed of the officers and members 
of the society,. their hats decorated with heads 
of wheat, and carrying a banner with a plow 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 123 

on one side and a sheaf of wheat on the re- 
verse. 

This display made an impression upon the 
people of the county which has never been 
effaced, but has been handed down to this day 
in the traditions of its old families so vividly 
that to have heard it in youth at the family fire- 
side answers very well for a patent of county 
rank. The report of this cattle-show went far 
and wide, like that of the Berkshire Jubilee, but 
it had far more practical and permanent results; 
which were increased as new attractions were 
added to the programme of the festival. The first 
of these additions was effected by inducing the 
women of the county to take a personal part in 
the show. Mr. Watson had to exert all his 
ingenuity, and call in the aid of his wife, to 
overcome their native shy timidity; but he 
succeeded, and their display of household manu- 
factures, fancy articles, dairy products, and the 
like, always thronged the halls in which they 
were exhibited with admiring crowds. The 
quilt that grandmother sent to the show in her 
young life and the silver bowl that grand- 
father's choice oxen won him are precious rel- 
ics in old Berkshire families wherever time 
may have scattered them. A Virginian letter- 
writer, in 1822, thus described the scene when 
the premiums awarded to women were de- 
livered. 



124 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

" The president from the pulpit, immediately 
after the address, announced: 'As premiums 
are proclaimed for females they will please rise 
in their places, and the chief marshal will de- 
liver to each her premium and certificate of 
honorable testimony.' The instant the name 
of the successful candidate was annotmced, the 
eyes of an exhilarated audience were flying in 
every direction, impelled by the strongest curi- 
osity to see the fortunate blushing female, with 
downcast eyes, raising both her hands, as the 
marshal approached; with one to receive her 
premium, with the other her certificate. The 
effect cannot be described. It must be seen to 
be realized." 

Strangely enough, the plowing match was 
not introduced until 1818, when it at once be- 
came the most exhilarating feature of the festi- 
val ; receiving, as a competitive exhibition, the 
attention, and exciting the interest which have 
since, in a very large degree, been usurped by 
the then unknown "agricultural horse-trot;" as 
some think, not greatly to the advantage of 
agriculture. In the good old plowing-match 
times, at an appointed hour, the trial took place 
in a previously announced level and convenient 
field; to which the whole " kritter-look-krowd" 
repaired, eager with the liveliest anticipations. 
And they were never disappointed ; for the con- 
tests were invariably precisely like that which 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 125 

Dr. Holmes has pictured to the life in his poem 
of " The Ploughman ;" a piece of word-painting 
as accurate as it is vivid. 

At the first plowing match, the first premium 
was taken by Major Melville's ploughman ; time, 
thirty-nine minutes. His competitors declared 
that his success was due to a superior iron plow 
which the major had just received from Boston. 
The curious in such matters may still see it 
in the historical cabinet of the Berkshire Athe- 
naeum, and judge its merits for themselves. It 
looks as though good work might be done with 
it rapidly. 

Dr. Holmes read his admirable poem, *' The 
Ploughman," in 1849. In 1852 a description of 
the cattle-show of 185 1 was published, from 
which we take a couple of descriptive para- 
graphs. 

" The festival of all festivals, the two days for 
which, in the opinion of our rural population, 
all other days in the round year were made, are 
those of the cattle-show and fair of the County 
Agricultural Society. Thanksgiving's grateful 
rest comes after. This is the shining goal of 
the year's race. Dreaming of a silver cup, or 
at least " honorable mention," the farmer tills 
his soil, tends his flocks and herds, and is care- 
ful for many things in sunshine and storm. 
For the same momentous occasion the busy 
fingers of his wife and daughters are plied, 



126 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS, 

while in the dairy, cleanliest receptacles are 
filled with balls of golden-hued butter and 
cylinders of odorous cheese. In chambers, 
too, quaintly variegated needleworks bud and 
blossom, and snowy webs issue from the antique 
loom. 

Nor do the taper fingers of more dainty ladies 
disdain to contend for the silver spoons; while 
retired gentlemen of fortune take a notable 
pride in the display of luscious fruits and mam- 
moth vegetables. 

The village beaux prize the day as an occa- 
sion for the display of superior gallantry; and 
the village magnates aspire to the offices in the 
gift of the society as no small distinctions in 
themselves, and possibly — pardon the suspicion 
— as stepping-stones to more substantial honors. 
Few among us but are at least amateurs in agri- 
culture; so that when the great festival of Ceres 
approaches, our mountain Microcosmos is all 
agog with excitement. The country around is 
in a ferment of preparation ; now is the harvest 
of the village tailors; now the paraphernalia of 
the village belles is cunningly renovated for con- 
quest. . . . On the bright and beautiful morn- 
ing of the second day of the fair, we again 
sallied forth in quest of adventure. The streets 
were thronged with all sorts of people, seem- 
ingly like ourselves, with no very definite notion 
of what they were after: 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 127 

" Like a flock of sheep, 
Not knowing and not caring whither 
They come or go — so that they fool together." 

My brain is mazed with the memory of that 
motley crowd. The delegate from Peacham, 
with gingerbread under one arm and "um- 
brell" under the other, jostled the gloved and 
caned exquisite from Broadway; and the trav- 
eler who could compare this with the great 
fairs of Europe was favored with the opinion of 
the youth whose eyes had hardly peeped over 
the Berkshire Hills — and it may be was wise 
enough to learn something from it. Here and 
there, men whose names were known the world 
over in literature or politics went about — moral- 
izing, perhaps; or, much more likely, watching 
that most animating portion of the scene: 

"The lassies with sly eyes, 
And the smile settling in their sun-flecked cheeks, 
Like bloom upon the mellow apricot." 

One of these famous people was Dr. Holmes, 
whom the writer then first saw, as he was lead- 
ing from booth to booth, and from side-show to 
side-show, a little boy — very likely, the since 
gallant captain and learned judge. At the cat- 
tle-show, two years before this, Dr. Holmes 
was chairman of the committee on the plow- 
ing-match, being probably induced to accept 
that position, and write the poem to which it 



\y 



I2S THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

led, by his personal friendship for Hon. Ensign 
H. Kellogg, who was secretary and actuary of 
the society. 

The oral exercises of the festival were held in 
the old church of 1 791, in which at two cattle- 
shows, years before, Bryant had listened to the 
singing of odes written for them by himself; 
and which had been the theater of many mem- 
orable scenes and events. The cattle-show ex- 
ercises always filled it to its full capacity with 
such an audience as may be imagined from 
what has been said. It could not be more than 
filled on this occasion, but there was a much 
larger sprinkling than usual of the more culti- 
vated class ; a hint of the coming treat having 
passed from mouth to mouth among them. 
When the report of the plowing-match com- 
mittee was called for, there was a storm of 
applause ; Dr. Holmes' Jubilee poem being still 
fresh in the minds of the people. After grace- 
fully recognizing it by a bow, he mounted half- 
way up the old-fashioned high pulpit stairs and, 
turning to the audience, read his report; of 
which we give below what is of permanent in- 
terest, and the poem it introduces; a poem 
which all critics now class as one of the finest 
georgics in the whole range of modern poetry; 
and which some of the best hold to be without 
a rival. 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 129 



Report. 

The committee on the plowing-match are 
fully sensible of the dignity and importance of 
the office entrusted to their judgment. To de- 
cide upon the comparative merits of so many 
excellent specimens of agricultural art is a most 
delicate, responsible, and honorable duty. 

The plough is a very ancient implement. It 
is written in the English language p-1-o-u-g-h, 
and, by the association of free and independent 
spellers, p-l-o-w. It may be remarked that the 
same gentlemen can, by a similar process, turn 
their coughs into cows; which would be the 
cheapest mode of raising live stock, although it 
is to be feared that they (referring to the cows) 
would prove but low-bred animals. Some have 
derived the English word plough from the 
Greek ploiitos^ the wealth which comes from the 
former suggesting its resemblance to the latter. 
But such resemblances between different lan- 
guages may be carried too far: as for example, 
if a man should trace the name of the Altamaha 
to the circumstance that the first settlers were 
all tomahawked on the margin of that river. 

Time and experience have sanctioned the 

custom of putting only plain, practical men 

upon this committee. Were it not so, the most 

awkward blunders would be constantly occur- 

9 



I30 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

ring. The inhabitants of our cities, who visit 
the country during the fine season, would find 
themselves quite at a loss if an overstrained 
politeness should place them in this position. 
Imagine a trader, or a professional man, from 
the capital of the State, unexpectedly called 
upon to act in rural matters. Plough -shares are 
to him shares that pay no dividends. A coulter, 
he supposes, has something to do with a horse. 
His notions of stock were obtained in Faneuil 
Hall market, where the cattle looked funnily 
enough, to be sure, compared with the living 
originals. He knows, it is true, that there is a 
difference in cattle, and would tell you that he 
prefers the sirloin breed. His children are 
equally unenlightened; they know no more of 
the poultry-yard than what they have learned 
by having the chicken-pox, and playing on a 
Turkey carpet. Their small knowledge of 
wool-growing is lam(b)entable. 

The history of one of these summer-visitors 
shows how imperfect is his rural education. 
He no sooner establishes himself in the country 
than he begins a series of experiments. He 
tries to drain a marsh, but only succeeds in 
draining his own pockets. He offers to pay for 
carting off a compost heap; but is informed that 
it consists of corn and potatoes in an unfinished 
state. He sows abundantly, but reaps little or 
nothing, except with the implement which he 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 131 

uses in shaving ; a process which is frequently 
performed for him by other people, though he 
pays no barber's bill. He builds a wire-fence 
and paints it green, so that nobody can see it. 
But he forgets to order a pair of spectacles 
apiece for his cows, who, taking offense at some- 
thimg else, take his fence in addition, and make 
an invisible one of it sure enough. And, finally, 
having bought a machine to chop fodder, which 
chops off a good slice of his dividends, and two 
or three children's fingers, he concludes that, 
instead of cutting feed, he will cut farming; 
and so sells out to one of those plain, practical 
farmers, such as you have honored by placing 
them on your committee ; whose pockets are not 
so full when he starts, but have fewer holes and 
not so many fingers in them. 

It must have been one of these practical men 
whose love of his pursuits led him to send in to 
the committee the following lines, which it is 
hoped will be accepted as a grateful tribute to 
the noble art whose successful champions are 
now to be named and rewarded. 

Dr. Holmes then read "The Ploughman." 

The Ploughman. 

Clear the brown path to meet his coulter's gleam ! 
Lo ! on he comes behind his smoking team. 
With toil's bright dew-drops on his sunbtirnt brow, 
The lord of earth, the hero of the plough ! 



132 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

First in the field before the reddening sun, 

Last in the shadows when the day is done. 

Line after line, along the bursting sod, 

Marks the broad acres where his feet have trod ; 

Still where he treads, the stubborn clods divide, 

The smooth, fresh furrow opens deep and wide; 

Matted and dense the tangled turf upheaves, 

Mellow and dark the ridgy cornfield cleaves ; 

Up the steep hillside, where the laboring train 

Slants the long track that scores the level plain ; 

Through the moist valley, clogged with oozing cla}', 

The patient convoy breaks its destined way ; 

At every turn the loosening chains resound, 

The swinging ploughshare circles glistening round, 

Till the wide field one billowy waste appears 

And wearied hands unbind the panting steers. 

These are the hands whose sturdy labor brings 
The peasant's food, the golden pomp of kings; 
This is the page whose letters shall be seen 
Changed by the sun to words of living green ; 
This is the scholar, whose immortal pen 
Spells the first lesson hunger taught to men ; 
These are the lines, oh, Heaven-commanded toil. 
That fill thy deed— thy charter of the soil ! 

O, gracious Mother, whose benignant breast 
Wakes us to life, and lulls us all to rest, 
How sweet thy features, kind to every clime. 
Mock with their smile the wrinkled front of time! 
We stain thy flowers, — they blossom o'er the dead ; 
We rend thy bosom, and it gives us bread ; 
O'er the red field that trampling strife has torn. 
Waves the green plumage of thy tasselled corn ; 
Our maddening conflicts scar thy fairest plain, 
Still thy soft answer is the growing grain. 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 133 

Yet, O our Mother, while uncounted charms 
Round the fresh clasp of thine embracing arms, 
Let not our virtues in thy love decay, 
And thy fond sweetness waste our strength away. 

No ! by these hills, whose banners now displayed 

In blazing cohorts Autumn has arrayed ; 

By you twin crests, amid the sinking sphere, 

Last to dissolve and first to reappear; 

By these fair plains the mountain circle screens 

And feeds in silence from its dark ravines, 

True to their homes, these faithful arms shall toil 

To crown with peace their own untainted soil ; 

And true to God, to freedom and rnankind. 

If her chained bandogs Faction shall unbind, 

These stately forms, that bending even now, 

Bowed their strong manhood to the humble plough, 

Shall rise erect, the guardians of the land, 

The same stern iron in the same right hand. 

Till Greylock thunders to the setting sun, 

"The sword has rescued what the ploughshare won." 

The reader familiar with Dr. Holmes' poetry 
may perhaps observe that some of the lines in 
the latter part of the above poem vary some- 
what from the corresponding ones in "The 
Ploughman" as given in the published collec- 
tions of the author's works. This is due to the 
fact that we give the poem as part of his cattle- 
show report on the plowing match of 1849; and 
print it as recorded in that connection. But, 
certainly and without a peradyenture, every 
reader will observe in the grand poetry of these 



134 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

closing lines, the grander prophecy that was 
grandly fulfilled many years after it was pro- 
nounced from the pulpit-stairs of the old meet- 
ing-house of patriotic associations. 



VII. 

PITTSFIELD CEMETERY DEDICATION POEM. 

Description of Cemetery Grounds — Previous Burial- 
Grounds — Dedication Exercises — Rev. Dr. Neill's 
Address Quoted — Dr. Holmes and Wendell Phillips 
—The Poem. 

The Pittsfield Rural Cemetery is one of the 
most beautiful and interesting places of repose 
for a city's dead. There are few so well fitted 
to soothe the mourner at his loved one's grave, 
as this where he finds it amid noble and gently 
pleasing natural scenery, developed but undis- 
turbed by art. The visiting stranger also 
keenly enjoys these beauties, less veiled for 
him with saddened thought; and with the 
deeper interest if he is able to invest it with the 
historic associations that of right belong to it. 

Previous to the year 1850, the encroachments 
of the living upon the resting-places — or what 
should have been the resting-places — of Pitts- 
field's dead, and the consequent removal of 
their ashes from one burial-ground to another, 
excited painful and indignant feeling in hearts 
to which those ashes were endeared by memory ; 
135 



136 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

and sense of a wrong near akin to sacrilege in 
many others. Circumstances in the early spring 
of 1850 so intensified this feeling that the town 
reversed its policy and ordered the purchase of 
a spacious and every way suitable site for a 
cemetery, a mile north of its central business 
square. In April, 1850, this property was con- 
veyed in trust to a corporation charged with its 
preparation for the object of its purchase, and 
with its care and management for that object 
in perpetuity. 

In an official report of this corporation the 
grounds which they received are thus described 
with perfect accuracy : 

" Alternate woods and lawns vary the scene. 
The irregularity of its surface, now breaking 
away into gentle inclinations and rounded 
knolls, adds greatly to its attractions. Fine 
trees dot the landscape, rural sights meet the 
eye wherever it is turned. Hidden within the 
deep shade of the woods, the wanderer is shut 
out from the world ; but as he emerges upon 
the uplands, the spires of the village, the quiet 
homesteads of the valley, and the distant moun- 
tains break upon him with a beauty almost 
enrapturing." 

Dr. Horatio Stone, of New York, an artist of 
well-won national reputation for such work, was 
engaged to lay out these grounds and transform 
them from a beautiful natural park to a beauti- 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 137 

ful and well-arranged cemetery. Poet and 
sculptor, his fine taste and peculiar genius 
made the best possible use of the facilities 
which nature offered him for making the 
spot intrusted to him more lovely than he re- 
ceived it. 

All summer long men and women of taste 
and feeling cheered and encouraged him by 
their visits and praises; among them Dr. 
Holmes, who thus had frequent opportunities to 
make studies of the superb and varied land- 
scape for his coming poem. 

As the fall approached, although Dr. Stone's 
plans had been but incompletely carried out, it 
was determined to dedicate the cemetery, and 
open it for use in accordance with an earnest 
desire of the people who were reluctant to lay 
their dead in burial-grounds soon to be aban- 
doned. But, although much remained to be 
done, much had already been accomplished. 
Without trenching upon their wild-wood char- 
acter, the groves had been rounded into grace, 
and freed from the unsightliness of decay and 
careless destruction. Man had restored to 
nature something of the symmetry of which his 
rude and hasty greed had robbed her. The 
waters of Onota flowed in a bold and rapid 
stream across the entrance of the cemetery; 
but some of them had been trained in a winding 
brook to a beautiful lawn where they spread 



138 THE POET A-MONG THE HILLS. 

into a pretty lakelet, to which Dr. Stone gave 
the name of St. John, the loving and beloved 
apostle of Christ; the consoler of the mourner. 
Miles of roads and paths wound in gentle curves 
through every part of the grounds; while along 
their western border one broad, straight avenue 
was prepared to receive its long vista of trees. 
Everywhere a beautiful present prophesied the 
more beautiful future. 

Monday the 9th of September was fixed for the 
dedication, and even that choice week of all the 
year in Pittsfield never afforded a more perfect 
day. The procession which, early in the fore- 
noon, moved from the park to the cemetery, was 
heterogeneous, but not in bad taste, as it forc- 
ibly represented the hold which the noble pub- 
lic work which called for it had taken upon the 
hearts of all classes of citizens. A platform for 
the speakers and the choir had been erected on 
the northern slope of Chapel Hill, opposite the 
south shore of the lakelet of St. John. And 
when the procession arrived, the whole popula- 
tion of the town seemed to be grouped around 
it. An elaborate program of exercises had 
been arranged and was perfectly carried out. 
It included addresses, prayers, and the singing 
of appropriate original odes. The dedicatory 
address was delivered by Rev. Dr. Henry Neill, 
of Lenox, and consisted chiefly of reasons why 
living men should institute memorials for the 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 139 

dead and make beautiful the spots consecrated 
to their rest and their memory; the argument 
being eloquently pressed and illustrated by ex- 
quisitely told instances from ancient and mod- 
ern history. We quote the opening passage: 

" Have we been persuaded — an assembly of the 
living — to look upon the very ground where we 
may sleep? Impelled by a desire to do honor 
to the dead, have we come within the precincts 
of a spot where every shadow seems now to 
deepen, and where the mountains point signifi- 
cantly to the skies? The sense of an unpaid 
tribute has summoned us from our homes. 
Affection in its reverence and depth of tender- 
ness has longed to give itself expression in some 
outward, significant, and permanent form until 
it can no longer be denied. Out of the hearts 
of a large community the declaration at length 
has come, that the remains of departed worth 
shall hereafter find a safe retreat and pledges 
of remembrance, foretokening their recompense 
of a higher reward." 

The dedicatory poem was then read by Dr. 
Holmes. Nowhere can the poem be so fully 
understood and enjoyed as here, where it first 
fell from the lips of its author in the presence 
of the landscape, and on the occasion, which 
inspired it. Nor can the varied charms of that 
landscape be in any other way so adequately 
appreciated as under the immediate interpreta- 



I40 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

tion of the verse which at once described them 
with the fidelity of a photograph, and gave 
them a soul with all a great poet's creative 
power. And yet that verse can never again 
thrill as it thrilled those who heard it pro- 
nounced in clear and silvery tones, in the grove 
on Chapel Hill, that superb and memorable 
September day of 1850. 

Dr. Holmes is reported to have answered, when 
he was asked where Wendell Phillips got those 
marvelous tones that, like magic music, charmed 
the most hostile audience, that it was " at his 
mother's knee, " or " in his mother's parlor" ; but 
those who listened to his own voice , not ringing 
but flowing through the greenwood arches of 
Chapel Hill, will believe that the gift to both 
was from a common ancestry far back of that. 
There was much that day to give character to 
the solemn consecration of our cemetery; but 
the willing and sympathizing genius of Oliver 
Wendell Holmes embalmed it forever in im- 
mortal verse. 

Dedicatory Poem. 

Angel of Death ! Extend thy silent reign ! 
Stretch thy dark sceptre o'er this new domain ! 
No sable car along the winding road 
Has borne to earth its unresisting load ; 
No sudden mound has risen yet to show 
Where the pale slumberer folds his arms below ; 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 141 

No marble gleams to bid his memory live 
In the brief lines that hurrying Time can give ; 
Yet, O Destroyer ! From thy shrouded throne 
Look on our gift ; this realm is all thine own ! 
Fair is the scene ; its sweetness oft beguiled 
From their dim paths the children of the wild ; 
The dark-haired maiden loved its grassy dells, 
The feathered warrior claimed its wooded swells, 
Still on its slopes the ploughman's ridges show 
The pointed flints that left his fatal bow, 
Chipped with rough art and slow barbarian toil,— 
Last of his wrecks that strews the alien soil ! 
Here spread the fields that waved their ripened store 
Till the brown arms of Labor held no more ; 
The scythe's broad meadow with its dusky blush ; 

' The sickle's harvest with its velvet flush ; 
The green-haired maize, her silken tresses laid. 
In soft luxuriance, on her harsh brocade ; 
The gourd that swells beneath her tossing plume ; 
The coarser wheat that rolls in lakes of bloom,— 
Its coral stems and milk-white flowers alive 
With the wide murmurs of the scattered hive ; 
Here glowed the apple with the pencilled streak 
Of morning painted on its southern cheek ; 
The pear's long necklace strung with golden drops, 
Arched, like the banian, o'er its pillared props; 
Here crept the growths that paid the laborer's care 
With the cheap luxuries wealth consents to spare ; 
Here sprang the healing herbs which could not save 

The hand that reared them from the neighboring 
grave. 

Yet all its varied charms, forever free 
From task and tribute. Labor yields to thee ; 
No more when April sheds her fitful rain 
The sower's hand shall cast its flying grain ; 



142 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

No more when Autumn strews the flaming leaves 

The reaper's band shall gird its yellow sheaves ; 

For thee alike the circling seasons flow 

Till the first blossoms heave the latest snow. 

In the stiff clod below the whirling drifts, 

In the loose soil the springing herbage lifts, 

In the hot dust beneath the parching weeds 

Life's wilting flower shall drop its shrivelled seeds; 

Its germ entranced in thy unbreathing sleep 

Till what thou sowest mightier angels reap ! 

Spirit of Beauty ! Let thy graces blend 
With loveliest Nature all that Art can lend. 
Come from the bowers where Summer's life-blood flows 
Through the red lips of June's half-open rose, 
Dressed in bright hues, the loving sunshine's dower; 
For tranquil Nature owns no mourning flower. 

Come from the forest where the beech's screen 
Bars the fierce noonbeam with its flakes of green ; 
Stay the rude axe that bares the shadowy plains. 
Stanch the deep wound that dries the maple's veins. 

Come with the stream whose silver-braided rills 
Fling their unclasping bracelets from the hills, 
Till in one gleam, beneath the forest's wings. 
Melts the white glitter of a hundred springs. 

Come from the steeps where look majestic forth 
From their twin thrones the Giants of the North 
On the huge shapes that crouching at their knees. 
Stretch their broad shoulders, rough with shaggy trees. 
Through the wide waste of ether, not in vain 
Their softened gaze shall reach our distant plain ; 
There, while the mourner turns his aching eyes 
On the blue mounds that print the bluer skies, 
Nature shall whisper that the fading view 
Of mightiest grief may wear a heavenly hue. 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 143 

Cherub of Wisdom ! Let thy marble page 
Leave its sad lesson, new to every age ; 
Teach us to live, not grudging every breath 
To the chill winds that waft us on to death. 
But ruling calmly every pulse it warms 
And tempering gently every word it forms. 

Seraph of Love ! In Heaven's adoring zone 
Nearest of all around the central throne. 
While with soft hands the pillowed turf we spread 
That soon shall hold us in its dreamless bed. 
With the low whisper — Who shall first be laid 
In the dark chamber's yet unbroken shade? — 
Let thy sweet radiance shine rekindled here. 
And all we cherish grow more truly dear. 
Here in the gates of Death's o'erhanging vault, 
Oh, teach us kindness for our brother's fault ; 
Lay all our wrongs beneath this peaceful sod 
And lead our hearts to Mercy and its God. 

Father of all ! In Death's relentless claim 
We read thy mercy by its sterner name ; 
In the bright flower that decks the solemn bier 
We see thy glory in its narrowed sphere ; 
In the deep lessons that affliction draws 
We trace the curves of thy encircling laws ; 
In the long sigh that sets our spirits free 
We own the love that calls us back to thee ! 

Through the hushed street, along the silent plain 
The spectral future leads its mourning train, 
Dark with the shadows of uncounted bands. 
Where man's white lips and woman's wringing hands 
Track the still burden, rolling slow before. 
That love and kindness can protect no more ; 
The smiling babe that, called to mortal strife. 
Shuts its meek eyes and drops its little life ; 



144 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

The drooping child that prays in vain to live, 
And pleads for help its parent cannot give ; 
The pride of beauty stricken in its flower ; 
The strength of manhood broken in an hour; 
Age in its weakness, bowed by toil and care, 
Traced in sad lines beneath its silvered hair. 

The sun shall set, and heaven's resplendent spheres 
Gild the smooth turf unhallowed yet by tears, 
But ah, how soon the evening stars will shed 
Their sleepless light around the slumbering dead ! 

Take them, O Father, in immortal trust! 
Ashes to ashes, dust to kindred dust. 
Till the last angel rolls the stone away 
And a new morning brings eternal day ! 



VIII. 

THE NEW EDEN. 

How the Poem Was Written. 

There is a curious story connected with the 
writing of "The New Eden." The Berkshire 
Horticultural Society had a very pleasant anni- 
versary dinner at Stock bridge, September 13, 
1854, which was attended by persons of nice 
tastes from all parts of the county. Among 
them was Hon. Edward A. Newton, of Pittsfield, 
a gentleman of rare, varied, and fastidious cul- 
ture. On his return, Mr. Newton, meeting a 
local editor, extolled without measure a poem 
which Dr. Holmes had read at the dinner, and 
urged the editor to procure it for publication ; 
and he accordingly asked for it, although, know- 
ing the money value of Dr. Holmes' verse, he 
had great doubts about obtaining it. But the 
poet, with his usual kindness — aided perhaps 
by a good word from his friend, Mr. Newton — 
readily consented to furnish the copy on three 
conditions: that he should have as many proofs 
and make as many alterations as he might 
please, and that, when the poem was ready, he 
10 145 



146 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

should have a hundred copies handsomely 
printed on commercial note-paper. These 
terms would have been but trifling for the least 
considerable poem from Dr. Holmes' pen. 
They were eagerly accepted. He had sixteen 
proofs, and made so many alterations and ad- 
ditions that the completed poem — " The New 
Eden" — was more than double the length of that 
read at Stockbridge; while the slight infusion 
of humor that flavored it for the dinner-table 
had entirely disappeared. 

It is only necessar}^ to add by way of explana- 
tion, that in the summer of 1854 Berkshire 
County suffered from one of the most severe 
and prolonged droughts it ever knew. The poem 
portrays it with its author's invariable fidelity 
to Nature. 

The New Eden. 

Scarce could the parting ocean close, 

Seamed by the Mayflower's cleaving bow, 

When o'er the rugged desert rose 

The waves that tracked the Pilgrim's plough. 

Then sprang from many a rock-strewn field 
The rippling grass, the nodding grain, 

Such growths as English meadows yield 
To scanty sun and frequent rain. 

But when the fiery days were done, 
And Autumn brought his purple haze, 

Then, kindling in the slanted sun, 

The hill-sides gleamed with golden maize. 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 147 

Nor treat his homely gift with scorn 
Whose fading memory scarce can save 

The hillocks where he sowed his corn, 
The mounds that mark his nameless grave. 

The food was scant, the fruits were few : 
A red streak glistened here and there ; 

Perchance in statelier precincts grew 
Some stern old Puritanic pear. 

Austere in taste, and tough at core 

Its unrelenting bulk was shed. 
To ripen in the Pilgrim's store 

When all the summer sweets were fled. 

Such was his lot, to front the storm 

With iron heart and marble brow, 
Nor ripen till his earthly form 

Was cast from life's Autumnal bough. 

But ever on the bleakest rock 

We bid the brightest beacon glow 
And still upon the thorniest stock 

The sweetest roses love to blow. 

So on our rude and wintry soil 

We feed the kindling flame of art, 
And steal the tropic's blushing spoil 

To bloom on Nature's icy heart. 

See how the softening Mother's breast 
Warms to her children's patient wiles, — 

Her lips by loving Labor pressed 
Break in a thousand dimpling smiles, 

From when the flushing bud of June 
Dawns with its first auroral hue, 



148 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

Till shines the rounded harvest moon, 
And velvet dahlias drink the dew. 

Nor these the only gifts she brings ; 

Look where the laboring orchard groans, 
And yields its beryl- threaded strings 

For chestnut burs and hemlock cones. 

Dear though the shadowy maple be, 
And dearer still the whispering pine, 

Dearest yon russet-laden tree 
Browned by the heavy rubbing kine ! 

There childhood flung its venturous stone, 
And boyhood tried its daring climb, 

And though our summer birds have flown 
It blooms as in the olden time. 

Nor be the Fleming's pride forgot. 

With swinging drops and drooping bells. 

Freckled and splashed with streak and spot, 
On the warm -breasted, sloping swells; 

Nor Persia's painted garden-queen, — 
Frail Houri of the trellised wall, — 

Her deep-cleft bosom scarfed with green, — 
Fairest to see, and first to fall. 

"When man provoked his mortal doom. 
And Eden trembled as he fell, 

When blossoms sighed their last perfume, 
And branches waved their long farewell, 

One sucker crept beneath the gate. 
One seed was wafted o'er the wall. 

One bough sustained his trembling weight ; 
These left the garden— these were all. 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 149 

And far o'er many a distant zone 
These wrecks of Eden still are flung : 

The fruits that Paradise hath known 
Are still in earthly gardens hung. 

Yes, by our own unstoried stream 
The pink-white apple-blossoms burst 

That saw the young Euphrates gleam — 
That Gihon's circling waters nursed. 

For us the ambrosial pear displays 
The wealth its arching branches hold, 

Bathed by a hundred summery days 
In floods of mingling fire and gold. 

And here, where beauty's cheek of flame 
With morning's earliest beam is fed, 

The sunset-painted peach may claim 
To rival its celestial red. 

What though in some unmoistened vale 
The summer leaf grow brown and sere, 

Say, shall our star of promise fail 
That circles half the rolling sphere. 

From beaches salt with bitter spray 

O'er prairies green with softest rain 
And ridges bright with evening's ray 

To rocks that shade the stormless main? 

If by our slender-threaded streams 

The blade and leaf and blossom die. 
If drained by noon-tide's parching beams 

The milky veins of Nature dry, 

See with her swelling bosom bare 
Yon wild-eyed Sister in the West, — 



150 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

The ring of Empire round her hair, — 
The Indian's wampum on her breast! 

We saw the August sun descend 
Day after day with blood-red stain, 

And the blue mountains dimly blend 

With smoke-wreaths from the burning plain 

Beneath the hot Sirocco's wings 
We sat and told the withering hours, 

Till Heaven unsealed its azure springs, 
And bade them leap in flashing showers. 

Yet in our Ishmael's thirst we knew 
The mercy of the Sovereign hand 

Would pour the fountain's quickening dew 
To feed some harvest of the land. 

No flaming swords of wrath surround 
Our second Garden of the Blest ; 

It spreads beyond its rocky bound 
It climbs Nevada's glittering crest. 

God keep the tempter from its gate I 
God shield the children, lest they fall 

From their stern fathers' free estate, 
Till Ocean is its only wall ! 



IX. 

Poems for Ladies' Fair. 

St. Stephen's Church Fair — A Lady's Raid on Dr. 
Holmes' Poetical Preserves — Camilla — Portia's 
Leaden Casket— What a Dollar Will Buy. 

During his Pittsfield residence, Dr. Holmes 
was a constant attendant on St. Stephen's 
Church ; and he took a genuine interest in the 
prosperity of the parish as it was indicated by 
the enlargement and improvement of its neat 
little gray-stone Gothic edifice — an interest 
that continued through life, as was pleasantly 
shown in a letter of 1893, warmly congratulat- 
ing his long-time friend, Rev. Dr. Newton, the 
rector in that year, upon the completion of the 
large and beautiful church then just erected. 
Among other touching memories, it recalled 
the writer's attendance in the old church, to 
whose building he made a curious contribution, 
that is now to be described here. In 1855, St. 
Stephen's parishioners were even more than 
usually zealous. The ladies, as ever, were fore- 
most in their zeal ; and they made extraordinary 
preparations for a fair that is still brilliant in 
151 



152 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

local society tradition. In their councils, they 
cast longing eyes toward the villa by the Housa- 
tonic. They had even the temerity to solicit a 
contribution from its master — not from his 
purse or his garden, which were open enough, 
but from his pen : something for the fair " post- 
office. " He happened to be at the moment so 
pressed for time that he was compelled to plead 
preoccupation. 

The committee were in despair. But Broad- 
hall was then the home of Mr. and Mrs. J. R. 
Morewood; both among the most devoted St. 
Stephen's parishioners. Mrs Morewood had 
too wide acquaintance with literary lions to be 
daunted even by one so formidable as Dr. 
Holmes,— who did not become "Autocratic" 
until two years later. Perhaps, too, the lady 
had an inkling that his kind heart, and their 
common love for St. Stephen's would aid her 
pleading. At any rate, when she heard of the 
committee's disappointment she at once mounted 
her horse and, with a single aid-de-camp, dashed 
off to the villa by the Housatonic. There she 
presented her petition, and it almost goes with- 
out saying that it was granted by the promise 
of two poems for the post-office. Dr. Holmes, 
of course, escorted his fair besieger to the door ; 
and in assisting her to remount her horse, being 
perhaps poetically nervous, he did not calculate 
with precise accuracy the amount of force neces- 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 153 

sary to place her gracefully in her seat. The 
saddle was, however, gained without a fall. 
But the poet, busy as he was, did not forget 
the incident, and when the fair postmistress 
received the two poems promised for her mail, 
there came also one for Mrs. Morewood, which 
described it with his never-failing grace, wit, 
and accuracy. We present it here. 



Camilla. 

The gray robe trailing round her feet, 

She smiled and took the slippered stirrup 
(A smile as sparkling, rosy, sweet, 

As soda, drawn with strawberry syrup) ; — 
Now, gallant, now ! be strong and calm, — 

The graceful toilet is completed, — 
Her foot is in thy hollowed palm — 

One little spring, and she is seated ! 

No foot-print on the grass was seen, 

The clover hardly bent beneath her, 
I knew not if she pressed the green, 

Or floated over it in ether ; 
Why, such an airy, fairy thing 

Should carry ballast in her pocket, — 
God bless me ! If I help her spring 

She'll shoot up heavenward like a rocket. 

Ah, fatal doubt ! The sleepless power 
That chains the orbs of light together, 

Bends on its stem the slenderest flower 
That lifts its plume from turf or heather; 



154 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

Clasp, lady, clasp the bridle rein 1 
The filly stands— hold hard upon her ! 

Twine fast those fingers in her mane, 
Or all is lost— excepting honor ! 

Earth stretched his arms to snatch his prize, 

The fairies shouted "Stand from under!" 
The violets shut their purple eyes, 

The naked daisies stared in wonder ; 
One moment. Seated in her pride. 

Those arms shall try in vain to win her; 
"Earth claims her not," the fairies cried, 

"She has so little of it in her !" 

The lady's raid on his poetic preserves, with 
its closing incident, reminded her classic host of 
Diana's light-footed messenger, Camilla, and 
probably of Pope's old familiar lines: 

"When swift Camilla scours along the plain. 
Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the 
main." 

The two other poems were inclosed in en- 
velopes, inscribed with mottoes. These were 
disposed of in a raffle, the winner of the first 
prize selecting that of the two poems which 
pleased him, from the motto on the envelope. 

Portia's Leaden Casket. 

Mrs. Ensign H. Kellogg drew the first prize 
and selected the envelope inscribed with the 
following 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS, 155 



Faith is the conquering Angel's crown ; 

Who hopes for grace must ask it ; 
Look shrewdly ere you lay me down ; 

I'm Portia's leaden casket. 

The following verses were found within: 

Fair lady, whosoe'er thou art, 
Turn this poor leaf with tenderest care 

And— hush, O hush thy beating heart— 
The One thou lovest will be there ! 

Alas ! not loved by thee alone, 

Thine idol, ever prone to range ; 
To-day, all thine, to-morrow flown, 

Frail thing that every hour may change. 

Yet, when that truant course is done, 

If thy lost wanderer reappear, 
Press to thy heart the only One 

That nought can make more truly dear ! 



Within this note was a slip of paper, with the 
following verses, inclosing a one dollar bill : 

Fair lady, lift thine eyes and tell 

If this is not a truthful letter. 
This is the one (i) thou lovest well 

And nought (o) can make thee love it better (10) . 

Though fickle, do not think it strange 
That such a friend is worth possessing, 

For one that gold can never change. 
Is Heaven's own dearest earthly blessing. 



156 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 



What a Dollar Will Buy. 

The second prize fell to Col. George S. Willis. 
The following was the 



If man, or boy, or dolt, or scholar 
Will break this seal, he pays his dollar; 
But if he reads a single minute. 
He'll find a dollar' s worth within it. 

A dollar's worth. 

Listen to me and I will try 

To tell you what a dollar will buy. 

A dollar will buy a Voter's conscience. 

Or a book of " Fiftieth thousand" nonsense ; 

Or a ticket to hear a Prima Donna, 

Or a fractional part of a statesman's honor ; 

It will buy a tree to sit in the shade of, 
Or half the cotton a tournure' s made of. 

It will buy a glass of rum or gin 

At a Deacon's store or a Temperance inn. 

(The Deacon will show you how to mix it. 
Or the Temperance Landlord stay and fix it.) 

It will buy a painting at Burbank's hall 

That will frighten the spiders from off the wall ; 

Or a dozen teaspoons of medium size. 
That will do for an Agricultural prize. 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 157 

It will buy four tickets to Barnum's show — 

(Late firm of Pharaoh, Herod & Co.) 

Or get you a paper that brings b}' mail 

Its weekly "Original thrilling tale" — 

Of which the essential striking plot 

Is a daddy that's rich and a youth that's not, 

Who seeking in vain for Papa's consent, 

Runs off with his daughter— the poor old gent ! 

The Governor's savage ; at last relents 

And leaves them a million in cash and rents. 

Or a Hair-wash, patent, and warranted too, 

That will turn your whiskers from gra)^ to blue. 

And dye old three-score as good as new ; 

So that your wife will open her eyes 

And treat you with coolness, and then surprise. 

And at last, as you're sidling up to her. 

Cry "I'll call my husband, you saucy cur!" 

Or a monochrome landscape, done in an hour, 
That looks like a ceiling stained in a shower ; 

Or a ride to Lenox through mire and clay. 
Where you may see, through the livelong day, 
Scores of women with couples of men 
Trudging up hill — and down again. 

This is what a dollar will do, 

With many things as strange but true ; 

This very dollar I've got from you— 

P. S. We shouldn't mind if you made it two. 

Two or three of the hits in "A Dollar's 
Worth" do not fit quite so well as they did in 
1855. Time has wrought many changes in 
forty years: but none to affect the victims of 



158 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

these verses so seriously that the reader cannot 
find somewhere some application for their wit. 

The allusion to the paintings in Burbank's 
Hall is so local and dates so far back that it 
requires a little explanation. This hall, the 
largest in Pittsfield for years, was a very plain 
affair; but, on account of its size, it was used 
for all the purposes wliich, in a thriving New 
England village, call for such an audience-room. 
All the great lyceum orators of the day, includ- 
ing Dr. Holmes himself, spoke from its plat- 
form ; and Fanny Kemble read Shakespeare on 
it to a thousand people. One day a hundred or 
more of the vilest daubs that ever pretended to 
be paintings were brought to it to be sold. It 
is a credit to Pittsfield that nobody would buy 
them, even for the value of their frames. Mr. 
Burbank, therefore, took the lot for his rent; 
and in 1855 they hung on the walls as a relief, 
if not an ornament, to their barrenness. What 
finally became of them we do not know. Per- 
haps they were in the wreck, when the hall itself 
crashed down tmder a weight of snow in 1861. 

The sale of the two poems sent by Dr. Holmes 
to the Fair added twenty-five dollars to its re- 
ceipts, which were applied to the cost of re- 
modeling the church; so that the St. Stephen's 
of that time was the third Pittsfield house of 
worship to whose building the descendants of 
Col. Jacob Wendell contributed. 



X. 

L' ENVOI. 

The Mountains and the Sea— Presentation from Dr. 
Holmes' Library to the Berkshire Athenaeum— 
Hawthorne's Desk— Pittsfield Characters in Dr. 
Holmes' Novels— Good-By, Old Folks! 

If a multitude of witnesses will serve, all 
that the earlier pages of this volume advanced 
relative to the kindly feeling of Oliver Wendell 
Holmes for the mountain county of the Bay 
State, and particularly for the town of his sum- 
mer home, has been made good; however im- 
perfectly • the argument founded upon their 
evidence may have been presented. 

Still we may be permitted to add a few more 
words of similar import. And, again, they are 
mostly his own; being part of a Breakfast- 
Table Talk. 

" I have lived by the sea-shore and by the 
moimtains. No, I am not going to say which 
I like best. The one where your place is, is 
the best for you. But this difference there is: 
you can domesticate the mountain, but the sea 
is fe7'CE natiirce. You may have a hut or know 
the owner of one, on the mountain-side; you 
159 



i6o THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

see a light half-way up its ascent in the even- 
ing, and you know there is a home, and you 
might share it. You have noted certain trees, 
perhaps. You know the particular zone, where 
the hemlocks look so black in October when the 
maples and beeches have faded. All its reliefs 
and intaglios have electrotyped themselves in 
the medallions that hang round the walls of 
your memory's chamber. The sea remembers 
nothing. It is feline. It licks your feet; its 
huge flanks purr very pleasantly for you ; but it 
will crack your bones, and eat you, for all that; 
and wipe the crimsoned foam from its jaws as 
though nothing had happened. The mountains 
give their lost children berries and water. The 
sea mocks their thirst and lets them die. The 
mountains have a grand, stupid, lovable tran- 
quillity. The sea has a fascinating, treachejous 
intelligence. The mountains lie about us like 
huge ruminants, their broad backs awful to look 
upon, but safe to handle. The sea smooths its 
silver scales until you cannot see their joints; 
but their shining is that of a snake's belly, after 
all. In deeper suggestiveness, I find as great 
a difference. The mountains dwarf mankind, 
and foreshorten the procession of its long gen- 
erations. The sea drowns out humanity and 
time; it has no sympathy with either, for it 
belongs to eternity; and of that it sings its 
monotonou's song for ever and ever. " 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. i6i 

It was quite unnecessary for the writer of 
these words to state in set terms whether he 
loved best the mountains or the seaside. What 
we can domesticate, we love; what is foreign 
to our homes is very likely to be foreign to our 
hearts. To be sure, Longfellow preferred the 
seaside. He was born and passed his youth in 
one of the most delightful cities by the sea: in 
his own words : 

"The beautiful town 
That is seated by the sea. " 

The mountain air made him drowsy, so that 
on some Pittsfield days he could not get on at 
all with Kavanagh ; which goes to confirm Dr. 
Plolmes' liberal comment on the choice of a 
summer home; "the one where your place is, 
is the best for you.". . . "You must cut your 
climate to your constitution as much as much 
as your clothing to your shape. After this con- 
sult your taste and convenience. But if you 
would be happy in Berkshire you must carry 
mountains in your brain; and if you would 
enjoy Nahant you must have an ocean in your 
soul. Nature plays at dominos with you ; you 
must match her piece or she will never give it 
up to you. " 

You will find more of this in the "Autocrat." 
Wonderful book that "Autocrat." More in it 
of the philosophy of the material, moral, intel- 

XI 



i62 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS, 

lectual, and spiritual universe, done up in a 
multitude of small packages, than are spread 
out over page upoi:i page of a dozen ordinary 
books of great pretense. Whatever your case 
may be the Autocrat has a prescription for it. 

Some of the paragraphs we have quoted ex- 
plain in the Autocrat's own poetic, philosophic 
way the elements in the mountains, ever con- 
stant in form, ever varying in aspect, which 
give the regions they dominate a definite in- 
dividuality, that fixes them in the memory of 
their children, to whom it doubly endears them. 

While the present volume has been preparing, 
Pittsfield has received an unexpected, but per- 
fectly natural and exceedingly welcome, testi- 
monial to Dr. Holmes' remembered friendship. 
His son and namesake, Judge Holmes, found 
in the library left by him more than a thousand 
volumes; some of them duplicates of books 
already owned by himself, but mostly works — 
many of rare and curious value — better suited to 
the shelves of a public institution or of a writer 
upon such varied and often abstruse themes as 
Dr Holmes treated, than to those of one ab- 
sorbed in intellectual pursuits of a different 
class; where they might long lie hidden and 
unused, while students were craving in vain the 
aid which they could give to their investiga- 
tions. Judge Holmes did not wish this disuse, 
which would amount to a misuse, of the treas- 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 163 

ures which had fallen to him. Still less could 
he think of making merchandise of what had 
come to him from such a source. Remember- 
ing his father's old kindness for Pittsfield, and 
doubtless inheriting something of it, he there- 
fore presented them to the Berkshire Athe- 
naeum, where they will long and conspicuously 
bear witness to the affection of the great author 
who once owned and enjoyed them for the town 
to which he was bound by many and varied 
ties. 

This Athenaeum is the " outward and visible 
manifestation" of what is best in intellectual 
Pittsfield. Its libraries, cabinets, and galleries 
are particularly rich in mementos of men dis- 
tinguished in the higher fields of thought and 
action. Hitherto the most highly prized of 
these memorials, at least among those of men 
of letters, has been the desk upon which Haw- 
thorne wrote his earlier and greatest novels. 
It is a plain but handsome piece of furniture; 
of solid mahogany ; not large, but one can see, 
that, with its capacious lower drawers, a deal 
of hard literary work could be done upon it 
conveniently and comfortably. It looks as 
though it might very well have come from old 
Salem, and been the work-bench of a man like 
Hawthorne. The long and yearly increasing 
train of men and women who seek it as a shrine 
of genius is a pleasing testimony to the growth 



1 64 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

of the sentiment which prompts loving and ad- 
miring homage before it. It has long been the 
object first sought by visitors to the Athenaeum 
of this class; although it might almost — not 
quite — have been said that it was only primus 
inter pares. But when the Holmes presentation 
shall have been arranged in the alcove to be 
prepared for it, the desk must be prepared to 
divide its honors with the books. 

And this reminds us that, for the summer 
visitor to Berkshire the Athenaeum is a capital 
supplement to its natural scenery. When a 
rainy day spoils his planned excursion in its 
fields and woods to some romantic spot, or his 
climbing for a grand view, it need not involve 
ennui in its cloudy hours; for they may be most 
agreeably spent in the enjoyment of the Athe- 
naeum's gathered treasures of art, nature, his- 
toric relics, and literature. Sometimes this 
affords a pleasing relief to the monotony of out- 
door sight-seeing; and it always gives a keener 
relish for, and better understanding of, the 
landscapes afterward seen. 

Our attention has just been called to another 
and very striking illustration of the enduring 
nature of Dr. Holmes' affection for his old own 
Berkshire home. It is contained in a letter to 
a very old and valued personal and literary 
friend, written as late as January 24, 1894. 
And it is worthy of remark that its three closely 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 165 

filled pages were written by himself in his neat, 
firm penmanship, when most of his correspond- 
ence was carried on through his secretary. We 
can quote only a few sentences ; but they are 
full of significance. 

" Oh, how I should love to look on Pittsfield 
again ! And yet 1 have always dreaded the 
rush of memories it would bring over me, and 
dread it still. But there lie buried many of my 
dearest and sweetest memories of my earlier 
middle age ; and, if I cannot look on Greylock 
and Pontoosuc with these eyes which are fast 
growing dim, I can recall them with infinite 
affection and delight." 

The poems collected in this little volume are 
far from the only ones that Dr. Holmes wrote 
in his seven Pittsfield summers. We have only 
taken those which have a decided Berkshire 
flavor. But there was an incident in the writ- 
ing of one of the others — the "Astrea," if we 
remember rightly— which, though not unusual 
in the operation of busy minds, may be of in- 
structive interest to some young writer. He 
had written one morning some thirty lines with 
more than his usual ease and rapidity. Then he 
" wrestled" long with a single couplet, of which 
he had a clear idea, but could not suit himself 
with the rhythm. The entrance of a casual visi- 
tor broke the "jam" of thought. The couplet 
was completed in a twinkling, and with a shout. 



i66 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

" Dr. Holmes made some pretty close studies, 
for use in his novels, of scenes and events which 
came under his eye in Pittsfield, and of the peo- 
ple who took part in them. Are you going to 
tell about those scenes and events and point out 
the originals of his characters?" No, inquiring 
friend. Very decidedly we are not going to do 
anything of the kind. Dr. Holmes certainly 
did witness some striking scenes here, ludicrous 
as well as otherwise; and he did depict them 
with a fidelity to nature that makes one suspect 
that he inherited the talents of some old Dutch 
artist far back in the Wendell genealogy. And 
he did make some portraits from life with like 
accurate truthfulness; so that an observant 
townsman, coming across one of these char- 
acters in his book, would be very apt to ex- 
claim: "Why that is Mr. X, or old X, to a 
dot." And yet it might be that the novelist's 
character was given a birth-mark or a scar that 
did not disfigure the countenance of Mr. X. 
Novelists select and combine traits for their 
characters, just as the old Greek sculptor selected 
and combined the beauties of many beautiful 
women to form the most beautiful, and the 
representative of the goddess of beauty; only 
that it is not always beautiful traits that the 
novelist selects. Doubtless in the sculptor's 
work the beauty contributed by one model was 
so recognizable that in common report she re- 



THE POET AMONG THE HILLS, 167 

ceived credit for all ; and so with the originals 
from whom the novelist draws his characters; 
he whose most salient features most nearly cor- 
respond with the salient features of the man in 
the novel is held responsible for all the ugli- 
nesses with which the author may see fit to in- 
vest him; so that Mr. X may be wrongfully 
deformed with the humped back which properly 
belongs to Mr. Y. 

There is yet another reason why it is par- 
ticularly safe for us to refrain from attempt- 
ing to identify the Pittsfield characters in Dr. 
Holmes' novels. While in his Berkshire verse 
there is as little harshness of thought as of 
rhythmical cadences, and while it is as void of 
censure as the sky is of clouds on the most per- 
fect Berkshire day in June or September, there 
was in him abundant electricity; latent until 
it was needed for the purification of a moral 
atmosphere. Tolerant as his charitable philos- 
ophy was of the common frailties and errors of 
humanity, from the bottom of his heart he hated 
shams, hypocrisy, and the oppression of the 
helpless; and he lashed them without mercy 
wherever he found them hidden, even if it in- 
volved the "dusting" of a prominent citizen's 
best black broadcloth. If we should attempt 
to point out of what he made fun and whom he 
lashed, we might do injustice, and would cer- 
tainly raise a storm that we do not care to face. 



i68 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 

No; let who will solve the problem, Mr. X 
may still represent the unknown figure, for all 
we shall do to reveal him. 

And now, to make a final quotation from the 
great and good-hearted doctor in medicine and 
in laws — "Good-by, old folks!" 



APPENDIX. 



THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS. 

L'eternite est une pendule, dont le balancier dit et 
redit sans cesseces deux mots seulement. dansle silence 
destombeaux: "Toujours! jamais ! Jamais ! toujours !" 

Jacques Bridaine. 

Somewhat back from the village street 
Stands the old-fashioned country seat. 
Across its antique portico 
Tall poplar trees their shadows throw, 
And from its station in the hall 
An ancient timepiece says to all,— 
*' Forever— never ! 
Never— forever!" 

Half way up the stairs it stands, 
And points and beckons with its hands 
From its case of massive oak 
Like a monk, who, under his cloak, 
Crosses himself, and sighs, alas ! 
With sorrowful voice to all who pass, — 
" Forever— never ! 
Never— forever !" 
169 



I70 APPENDIX. 

By day its voice is low and light; 
But in the silent dead of night, 
Distinct as a passing footstep's fall, 
It echoes along the vacant hall, 
Along the ceiling, along the floor, 
And seems to say at each chamber door, — 
" Forever — never ! 
Never — forever !" 

Through days of sorrow and of mirth. 
Through days of death and days of birth, 
Through every swift vicissitude 
Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood, 
And as if, like God, it all things saw, 
It calmly repeats those words of awe, — 
" Forever— never ! 
Never — forever !" 

In that mansion used to be 
Free-hearted hospitality ; 
His great fires up the chimney roared ; 
The stranger feasted at his board ; 
But, like the skeleton at the feast. 
That warning timepiece never ceased, — 
" Forever — never ! 
Never — forever !" 

There groups of merry children played. 
There youths and maidens dreaming strayed 
O, precious hours ! O, golden prime, 
And affluence of love and time ! 
Even as a miser counts his gold. 
Those hours the ancient timepiece told, — 
" Forever — never ! 
Never — forever !" 



APPENDIX. 171 

From that chamber, clothed in white. 
The bride came forth on her wedding night ; 
There, in that silent room below, 
The dead lay in his shroud of snow ; 
And in the hush that followed the prayer, 
Was heard the old clock on the stair,— 
" Forever — never ! 
Never — forever !" 

All are scattered now and fled, 
Some are married, some are dead; 
And when I ask, with throbs of pain, 
"Ah ! when shall they all meet again?" 
As in the daj'S long since gone by. 
The ancient timepiece makes reply, — 
" Forever — never ! 
Never — forever !" 

Never here, forever there, 
Where all parting pain and care, 
And death and time Shall disappear, — 
Forever there, but never here ! 
The horologe of Eternity 
Sayeth this incessantly,— 

" Forever — never ! 
Never — forever !" 

There is a popular outcry just now against 
inserting in works intended for popular read- 
ing phrases in foreign languages without trans- 
lations. The outcry is absurd, as of course 
every reader knows enough of French, German, 
and Latin to translate for himself; but as the 
demand seems to be in earnest we comply with 



172 APPENDIX. 

it, SO far as it concerns the quotation at the 
head of the poem of the old clock, which in 
English would read: "Eternity is a clock 
[horologe] whose pendulum says, and repeats 
without ceasing these two words only in the 
silence of the tombs: 'Forever! never I 
Never! forever!'" The context in the para- 
graph from which this quotation is taken makes 
it much more grim, but not so well adapted to 
the purpose of the poet. 

The view of the House of the Old Clock, 
representing it as it was at the time of Mr. 
Longfellow's marriage, is copied from one pre- 
sented to the Berkshire Athenaeum a few years 
ago by his brother-in-law Nathan Appleton, and 
inscribed with the autograph signature of 
Henry W. Longfellow in testimony to its accu- 
racy and his continued interest in the place. 



APPENDIX^ 173 



A BERKSHIRE SUMMER MORNING. 

ODE FOR THE BERKSHIRE JUBILEE. 

By Mrs. Frances Ann Kemble. 

Darkness upon the mountain and the vale. 
The woods, the lakes, the fields, are buried deep, 
In the still silent solemn star-watched sleep ; 

No sound, no motion, and o'er hill and dale 
A calm and lovely death seems to embrace 
Earth's fairest realms, and Heaven 'sunfathomed space. 

The forest slumbers, leaf and branch and bough. 
High feathery crest, and lowliest grassy blade ; 
All restless, wandering wings, are folded now, 

That swept the sky, and in the sunshine play'd. 
The lake's wild waves sleep in their rocky bowl. 
Unbroken stillness streams from nature's soul, 
And night's great, star-sown v/ings stretch o'er the 
whole. 

In the deep trance of the hush'd universe, 
The dark death mystery doth man rehearse ; 
Now, for a while, cease the swift thoughts to run 
From task to task ; tir'd labor, overdone 
"With lighter toil than that of brain or heart. 
In the sweet pause of outward life takes part : 
And hope, and fear, desire, love, joy, and sorrow, 
Wait 'neath sleep's downy wings, the coming morrow. 
Peace on the earth, profoundest peace in Heaven, 
Praises the God of peace by whom 'tis given. 



174 APPENDIX. 

But hark ! the woody depths of green 

Begin to stir ; 
Light breaths of life creep fresh between 

Oak, beech, and fir: 
Faint rustling sounds of trembling leaves 

Whisper around ; 
The world at waking slowly heaves 

A sigh profound ; 
And showers of tears, night-gathered in her eyes. 
Fall from fair nature's face, as she doth rise. 

A ripple roughens on the lake, 

The silver lilies shivering wake. 

The leaden waves lift themselves up, and break, 

Along the laurel' d shore ; 
And woods and waters, answering each other, make 

Silence no more. 

And lo ! the east turns pale ! 
Night's dusky veil 

Thinner and thinner grows. 
Till the bright morning star. 

From hill to hill afar. 

His fire glance throws. 
Gold streaks run thro' the sky: 
Higher and yet more high 

The glory streams ; 
Flushes of rosy hue 
Long lines of palest blue, 

And amber gleams. 

From the black valleys rise. 
The silver mists, like spray, 
Catch, and give back the ray, 

With thousand dyes. 
Light floods the Heavens, light pours upon the earth 
In glorious light, the glorious day takes birth. 



APPENDIX, 175 

Hail to this day ! that brings ye home, 

Ye distant wanderers from the mountain land. 
Hail to this hour ! that bids ye come 

Again upon your native hills to stand. 
Hail, hail ! From rocky peak, 

And wood embowered dale, 
A thousand loving voices speak, 

Hail ' home-turn'd pilgrims, hail ! 
Oh, welcome ! From the meadow and the hill 

Glad greetings rise ; 
From flowing river, and from bounding rill, 
Bright level lake, and dark green wood depths still, 
And the sharp thunder-splinter'd crag, that strikes 
Its rocky spikes 
Into the skies. 

Greylock, cloud-girdled, from his purple throne, 

A voice of welcome sends. 
And from green sunny fields, a warbling tone 

The Housatonic blends. 

Welcome ye absent long, and distant far ! 

Who, from the roof -tree of your childhood turn'd, 
Have waged mid strangers life's relentless war. 

While at your hearts, the ancient home-love burn'd. 

Ye, that have plough'd the barren briny foam, 
Reaping hard fortunes from the stormy sea, 

The golden grain fields rippling round your home, 
Roll their rich billows from all tempests free. 

Ye, from those western, deadly blooming fields. 
Where Pestilence in Plenty's bosom lies. 

The hardy rock-soil of your mountains yields 
Health's rosy blossoms to these purer skies. 



176 APPENDIX, 

And ye who on the accursed southern plain. 
Barren, not fruitful, with the sweat of slaves, 

Have drawn awhile the tainted air in vain, 

'Mid human forms, their spirits' living graves. 

Here, fall the fetters ; by his cottage door 
Lord of the lordliest life, each peasant stands, 

Lifting to God, as did his sires of yore, 
A heart of love and free laborious hands.* 

On each bald granite brow, and forest crest. 

Each stony hill path, and each lake's smooth shore, 

Blessings of noble exil'd patriots rest ; f 
Liberty's altars are they evermore. 

And on this air, there lingers yet the tone, 
Of those last sacred words to freedom given, 

The mightiest utterance of that sainted one. 
Whose spirit from these mountains soar'd to Heaven. :|: 

Ye that have prosper'd. bearing lience with ye 

The virtues that command prosperity ; 
To the green threshold of your youth, ah ! come ! 

And hang your trophies round your early home. 

Ye that have suffer'd, and whose weary eyes 
Have turn'd with sadness to your happier years, 

Come to the fountain of sweet memories ! 
And by its healing waters, dry your tears ! 



*This stanza was omitted in the reading, as it was thought 
not to be in strict harmony with the occasion.— ED, 

t The exiled Italian patriots who were hospitably and sympa- 
thetically received by the Sedgwick family. 

4:Rev. Dr. William Ellery Channing. 



APPENDIX, 177 

Ye that departed young, and old return, 
Ye who led forth by hope— now hopeless come. 

If still, unquenched within your hearts, doth burn 
The sacred love and longing for your home : 

Hail, hail ! Bright hill and dale 
With joy resound ! 

Join in the joyful strain ! 
Ye have not wept in vain. 
The parted meet again, 

The lost shall yet be found ! 

And may God guard thee, oh, thou lovely land! 

Danger, nor evil, nigh thy borders come. 
Green towers of freedom may thy hills still stand. 

Still, be each valley, peace and virtue's home: 
The stranger's grateful blessing rest on thee, 

And firm as Heaven, be thy prosperity 



178 APPENDIX. 



A QUAINT OLD PAPER. 

After all the preceding pages were in type, 
we received, through the courtesy of Mr. Henry 
Talcott Mills, from Miss Electa Colt, an old 
manuscript found among the papers of her 
father, the late Hon. Ezekiel Root Colt, who 
was much given to preserving such " curios" of 
Berkshire's old times. And it is of so peculiar 
interest that we add it here, even at this late 
hour. We have endeavored, in our chapter 
illustrating Dr. Holmes' poem of "The Plough- 
man," to give the reader some idea of the quaint 
elements of strength which rendered the old 
Berkshire Agriculture Society a source of 
rational pleasure to many thousands of men, 
women and children; and of power for good in 
the world. But this old paper makes one of its 
early cattle-show anniversaries a delicious re- 
ality for us; the dead past is in verity restored 
to life. It contains, in his own penmanship, 
the directions for this anniversary given to his 
lieutenants by Elkanah Watson, the creator of 
the great system of American county cattle- 
shows. In it, we can, as it were, see his mind 
in full operation as he was laying the founda- 
tions of that system ; even as, when the first 



APPENDIX. 



179 



cattle-show procession was passing through 
Pittsfield streets, the spectators saw Abraham 
Scholfield's hand-looms at work. 

Half of the old paper preserved by Mr. Colt 
is occupied by a ground-plan of the old meeting- 
house of 1 79 1, in which the exercises were held. 
There is a broad platform before the pulpit — 
the deacons' seat intervening — upon which 
places are assigned for the officers of the so- 
ciety; those for the president, vice-president 
and a third person — perhaps a chaplain — being- 
designated by a drawing which is supposed to 
represent a sofa, but which looks much more 
like a boat with three oarsmen. The body of 
the auditorium is arranged in five sections: the 
pews on the west side of the broad middle aisle 
being divided between the "male" and the 
"female" premium-takers, and those on the 
east side being reserved for the members of the 
society, while the outer rows are left for 
the "spectators." We copy the directions 
verbatim. 

"Ceremony. — The President to call off the 
premiums, — The Vice-President to hand the 
article to the President, — the treasurer to take 
it from him — the person [to whom the premium 
is awarded] to advance to the foot of the stage, 
as his name is called: if a lady, to be met by a 
marshal and conducted, — the treasurer to de- 



i8o APPENDIX. 

scend the steps, meet her at the foot, and de- 
liver to her the premium and certificate |of 
merit] — the marshal then to conduct her to a 
pew on the right. — If a gentleman, he is to 
ascend the steps, and receive his premium from 
the President; the marshal then to conduct him 
to a west pew, designated above. — An elegant 
band of music to be provided in the gallery, — 
some lasses as singers to be trained to sing some 
pastoral airs, draped in appropriate garlands 
and flowers, as each premium is delivered to 
the ladies. Yankee Doodle is to be struck up 
[as each male premium-taker is called] to con- 
tinue until he reaches the foot of the stage; and 
then cease. A full band to play some favorite 
short air after the premiums are delivered to 
the men — also the women." 

We see traces of Mr. Watson's Parisian train- 
ing transferred to all this rural pomp and cir- 
cumstance; and to those who do not take into 
consideration its object it may seem out of 
place on such an occasion. It would be so at 
the present day, to which a balloon ascension 
or a gubernatorial lion is better adapted ; but it 
was not so in the old days, when rude pageantry 
was loved if it was significant. Sentiment is 
at all times a powerful motor for the public 
mind. And there was certainly more senti- 
ment in a silver bowl or a dozen teaspoons, 



APPENDIX. i8i 

even if only the workmanship of the village 
silversmith, if delivered according to the old pro- 
gramme quoted above, and with a handsomely 
printed certificate of merit, than there is in the 
one, ten, or more dollars delivered as they now 
are to meritorious premium-takers at our cattle- 
shows. At any rate the old-time cattle-show 
pageantries made the desired impression upon 
the secluded community of few holidays, whose 
only other similar spectacle in the year was the 
procession of the judges in their robes, from the 
tavern where they "stopped," to the court- 
house, preceded by the high sheriff in uniform 
and holding a naked sword before him. The im- 
pression made by those old cattle- shows exten- 
ded far and wide, as thousands of others were 
modeled upon them; and their influence for 
good is felt to-day. In this year 1895, Berk- 
shire county is witnessing festal occasions — 
some of them at the very moment we are writ- 
ing these words — of far greater costliness and 
splendor than even Elkanah Watson's sanguine 
forecast of the county's future could have con- 
ceived. Will they, three-quarters of a century 
hence, be remembered, and be worthy of mem- 
ory for their influence upon the world, as the 
programme we have quoted recalls the old cattle- 
show exercises of so long ago that they were 
already a fading phantom of the past when Dr. 
Holmes read his " Ploughman" in the same old 



1 82 APPENDIX, 

meeting-house in which they were conducted? 
It may be ; for 

"Moves one, move all ; 
Hark to the footfall ! 

On, on forever." 

PiTTSFiELD, June 6, 1895. 



